Rooms Are Never Finished

Many of my favorite things are broken.
- Mario Buatta

In here it's deliberately dark so one may sigh

in peace. Please come in. How long has it been?
Upstairs climb slowly-the touch is more certain.
You've been, they say, everywhere. What city's left?
I've brought the world indoors. One wants certainty.
Not in art-well, you've hardly changed-but, why,

in life. But for small invisible hands, no wall
would be lacquered a rain forest's colors. Before,
these walls had just mirrors (I tried on-for size-
kismet's barest air). Remember? You were then
led through all the spare rooms I was to die

in. But look how each room's been refurbished:
This screen in stitches silk-routes a river
down Asia, past laughing Buddhas, China
a lantern burning burning burning for
"God to aggrandise, God to glorify"

in (How one passes through such thick wall).
Candles float past inked-in laborers
but for whose hands this story would be empty,
rooms where one plots only to die, nothing
Dear! but a bare flame for you to come by

in. Dor't touch the vases! Long ago
their waists, abandoned by scrolling foliage
were banded by hands, banded quick with omens:
galloping floods, hooves iron by the river's edge.
O beating night, what could have reined the sky

in? Come to the window: panes plot the earth
apart. In the moon's crush, the cobalt stars
shed light-blue-on Russia: the republics porcelain,
the Urals mezzotint. Why are you weeping
dear friend? Hush, rare guest. Once a passer-by

in tears, his footsteps dying, was... well, I rushed
out and he was gone. Out there it's poison.
Out there one longs for all one's ever bought,
for shades that lighten a scene: When the last leaves
were birds spent wingless on trees, love, the cage to cry

in, was glass-stormed by the North. Now that God
is news, wha?'s left but prayer, and ... well, if you
love something, why argue? What we own betters
any tale of God's-no? That framed scroll downstairs
and here! this shell drowned men heard God's reply

in. Listen, my friend. But for quick hands, my walls
would be mirrors. A house?A work in progress,
always. But: Could love's season be more than this?
I'l wipe your tears: Turn to me. My world would be
mere mirrors cut to multiply, then multiply
in. But for small hands. Invisible. Quick...