In the Dark Room

Does the white guitar require a whammy bar?
Get a hanger and abort the toilet duck.

Translation’s where it lets you down—not from words
To words, not from languages to languages,

Not even from the imaginary world
To words, but from the world just now arriving

In the past. The saplings haven’t budded yet.
The dusk is settling as upstairs a toilet

Flushes. Can you recall that Kodak pocket
Instamatic you got when you were thirteen,

How the beautiful stuff you tried to capture
With it never looked as you remembered scenes,

And yet somehow the snapshots always dragged in
Some ugly details you hadn’t seen at all?