"Seneca on Banishment" (Benjamin Paloff)

May 23, 2008

"Seneca on Banishment"

Somewhere I missed where it said not to do the emperor’s sister,
and at last I get what the khans will be about: outside, nothing
is more inviting than a wall visible from space. So I say to myself,
O Greatest Etcetera of your generation, show me a cataclysm
quieter than an exploding star and I’ll know there’s no need
to console my mother for what I’ve become, a dream
of walking so far at night that my clothes wake me in the morning,
anxious to go, gasping for breath. I pray to Time to make this real.

—Benjamin Paloff
from Columbia Poetry Review, No. 21, 2008

Tags: benjamin paloff, poetry, readings