Habit, The Ritual Of Dinners Poem by Raquel Angel Nagler

T h e r i t u a l o f d i n n e r s

Beneath the weight of twilight
The table-cloth,
Soaked with the smell of little dinners,
Curls
Around the old man of useless tears:
Time.

* * *

Over the fissured lands of the years,
I have learnt how to set up floors:
All the howls and the whispers inside a daily tile,
Inaudible as habit,
Beneath my feet.

* * *

Among habitual lives,
Each with it own dying,
I anchor my unfinished evenings
In a little bay
That tames my mad salt.

* * *

Sometimes
When I float in the quivering two o’clock heat
I feel how my pajamas: the silk threads of habit,
Sweat on the sheets of the siesta
My silent sea.

* * *

In the aquarium of habit,
Like the Jordan of everyday life,
We purify
The tears of our little terrors.