In her own words...
"To Zeno"
2002
You with your equation,
an arrow plugs your heart,
half in half out
makes nowhere at all.
You won't admit it
but what's left is time:
a patient sponge to stop
your arrow from bleeding.
It isn't more years I want,
just some older days.
If a day had four hours more
I think I could handle it.
My flightless friend, I'm waiting.
(We haven't all night.)
Burn up your dotted line.
Deck me out in minutes.
an arrow plugs your heart,
half in half out
makes nowhere at all.
You won't admit it
but what's left is time:
a patient sponge to stop
your arrow from bleeding.
It isn't more years I want,
just some older days.
If a day had four hours more
I think I could handle it.
My flightless friend, I'm waiting.
(We haven't all night.)
Burn up your dotted line.
Deck me out in minutes.
About this work
“To Zeno” was first published in Ploughshares, Vol. 28, no. 4 (Winter 2002-03), p. 181. It is also included in Dorothea Tanning's book, A Table of Content: Poems, New York: Graywolf Press, 2004, p. 78, and may not be reprinted without the publisher's permission.
