Epistle to Poe II |
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Edgar:
The light of another dawn stains bedroom curtains. I stumble to the washroom, splash water from the sink. By mirrored image, I see my beard needs trimming. I lift my eyes to those in the glass, feel my blood slow and almost cease. Two other eyes – vast, dark and abstracted – pierce through. They are yours, Edgar – and behind my face in the mirror, another face, which only can belong to you. I find a chair in my book-lined living-room, slide papers to the rug and sit. From a table I take pen and paper. I had thought myself thoroughly finished with anatomizing our hold on one — another — but now I see you will not quit. So, what am I to think? That we are brothers in some ghostly sense? But, Edgar, you had a brother of flesh and blood who died early. Or, am I some brother spirit? — no carbon copy of what you were or are, but ‘vrai semblable’. Then, again, I may simply have lost my mind. That, in this silent apartment, seems possible, despite the sunlight slanting across my trouser cuff. You wore no beard, only the moustache which someone who knew you, called ‘untidy’. I doubt that person’s assessment. There was little untidy about you. Your beloved Muddy, mother to Virginia, saw to that, as did your pride. Perhaps your well-ordered faculties of reason, your ability to work well, even brilliantly, under sustained journalistic pressure, were honed by your early military training. That training formed your carriage, described as erect, athletic. It made you neat in all you did by conscious design.
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