1/28/19

Entry in an Unknown Hand - Franz Wright

And still nothing happens. I am not arrested.  
By some inexplicable oversight

nobody jeers when I walk down the street.

I have been allowed to go on living in this  
room. I am not asked to explain my presence  
anywhere.

What posthypnotic suggestions were made; and  
are any left unexecuted?

Why am I so distressed at the thought of taking  
certain jobs?

They are absolutely shameless at the bank—
You’d think my name meant nothing to them. Non-
chalantly they hand me the sum I’ve requested,

but I know them. It’s like this everywhere—

they think they are going to surprise me: I,  
who do nothing but wait.

Once I answered the phone, and the caller hung up—
very clever.

They think that they can scare me.  

I am always scared.

And how much courage it requires to get up in the  
morning and dress yourself. Nobody congratulates  
you!

At no point in the day may I fall to my knees and  
refuse to go on, it’s not done.

I go on

dodging cars that jump the curb to crush my hip,

accompanied by abrupt bursts of black-and-white
laughter and applause,

past a million unlighted windows, peered out at  
by the retired and their aged attack-dogs—

toward my place,

the one at the end of the counter,  

the scalpel on the napkin.

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