Sport 16: Autumn 1996
Binoculars
Binoculars
for Marc Nieson
I was a stranger. But you look
familiar, people would say.
Big cars, big country. You need
binoculars, here, said a man, I can sell you some.
I took them back to my room
and watched hawks over the river,
sun reddening their tail feathers,
then I looked at everything in my room
through them, the wrong way round—
tiny photographs, books, tiny lamp—
which made me feel instantly philosophical,
distant, a little taller. Infinitely stranger.