to my beautiful contemporary, Haviera

from Theodore Roethke en 15 poetas norteamericanos

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad paper-weight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in inmaculate public places.
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The inalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Droping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.