At Leisure
I am at leisure now to tell you things.
That many y’s are x and x’s y.
That z may be what happens when you die.
That all the letters vary, little springs
on which you hang your tiny weights. Which brings
me to the point: my words and yours imply,
proclaim, equivocate, insult, deny,
exult—but to each word some doubt still clings.
Why I’m at leisure is of no concern
to you nor is just who or what I am.
I am the voice addressing you. You’ll learn
in time, or else you won’t, what kind of sham
or actuality this is. Don’t burn
to know. The tiger frets, but does the lamb?
Dan Campion is the author of Calypso (1981), A Playbill for Sunset (2022), The Mirror Test (2024), Star Anchors (2026), and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (1995) and is a co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981, 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2019). Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Able Muse, Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, THINK, and many other magazines.
Amethyst Review 