The Narrator’s Retirement

“this sprite-like, ageless, androgynous, amoral, wise, opinionated, understanding, sharp-eyed, partial, judicious, fond, credulous, and cynical being”

It had to stop. The charters

From the invisible world,

The voice brooding on the deep—

The narrator needed sleep.

Voice heard only once

And then long listened for, bird

Of an unknown provenance,

Outside my windows that night,

Thought the narrator, please, please,

Sing to me again.

It was one of those dismal

Nights. No, no, I must quit it.

This time I speak for myself.

The narrator tossed and turned

In an emptiness 

Neither time nor space,

The hovering place.

It couldn’t think what to say

If there was no one,

No action, no scene

Needing description.

To have spent one’s existence 

As a narrator

And, worst of all, in English,

Language possessing

No gender-neutral

Term for a person,

Meant to have very little

Material for a self,

Just career and nothing else.

Now what? It waited,

Hoping for something to start

Of its own accord.

A vast vacancy

Without boundaries

Was all it experienced.

The narrator decided

That, without surrendering

To its old habits,

Perhaps it could act.

What can a narrator do,

It wondered, a bit forlorn,

Being only words?

An act, any act . . . 

Ah! An act of speech perhaps.

Gathering itself,

Becoming its words,

The words breathing itself

Against the featureless waste,

The narrator said,

“Now! Let there be light!”

And began its retirement.