Celebrity
Diana Senechal
Stop, gossips: before your knee-tongues jerk
out into “snob,” consider who you name,
think of her easy gliding up the same
stairway you throng down onto. Try to work
some silence for a change; notice her own,
the way she harbors thought, her gently cold
turn of the head, her shroud. Your overtold
rumors make petty clatter; glancing down
barely, she laughs, not like a brittle queen
weary of her rude realm, but like a boy
who sees his checkmate move. Those who enjoy
solving puzzles may know of her demesne,
which worships only the divinity
of doing well, where art, clothes, syllables
blaze calm through meme and slogan. Dogma falls,
will always fall, against infinity.
I too have wondered how such equipoise
can fill a woman, so that all your names,
rumors, and taunts—even your gilded fames
and praises—fizzle into wisps of noise.
Maybe a brutal grief taught her the cost
of stooping even slightly for the sake
of pleasing. Maybe she turned mistake
into magnificence. But having lost
a thing or two, I want for once to live
up to the dark and say: I do not know.
You say you’ll pay me if I say I know,
but I say no. I want for once to live.
(At first, this poem echoes Richard Wilbur’s “Still, Citizen Sparrow”; the echo fades as the poem progresses.)
Take Away the Takeaway 