Looking for Something Written, the Ideal Reader
Poetry by M.W. Miller
In the early days we tried to turn away when he appeared
in the alleys of the neighbourhood rummaging through the
garbage cans and heaps
of trash, looking, he mumbled, for something written on
scraps
of paper, or on anything at all, for something written, which
he grumbling
claimed to never find, though he did find writing, as anybody
could see, he had one rolling
eye, one eye never moved, he was tall, he was gaunt, and
underneath his eyes, rolling
or not, were dark shadows, he wore an old torn filthy
checkered suit, prison issue
it must have been, and his hair stood out in tufts, nobody
in the neighbourhood could much stand his mumbling, his
rummaging
or his stench, and especially objected to this idea of
something written that only he
understood or could judge, though he offered no standard, no
aim, no helpful
critique of what fell short, of what only appeared to be
written but was not, what kind of judge
could this be in a filthy prison-issue suit, one eye rolling, one
eye dead, who untangled from empty tins and kitchen waste
scraps
of paper on which something was certainly written but about
which he mumbled there was not, letting each
piece drop to the pavement, fluttering, and shuffling
on to the next can or bin or pile, yet such was the strange
attraction of his reeking passage through the alleys that in the
end we felt
compelled to help, and so brought him torn pages of menus,
old newspapers, novels, scripts, dissertations, ad copy, labels,
signs, guides, maps and books
of instruction, and said that here was something
written, but with each example he only stumbled back as if
startled, shook his head and mumbled, nothing written, and
went on
with his meandering or unravelling route down the alleys, he
was lunatic
filthy and old, but still as cook, as crossing guard, as garbage
collector, as dishwasher, as news vendor, as server, we gathered
along his route like exemplary characters in a children’s
story set in a child’s idea of a city, as if the buildings were
made of balloons and wooden blocks, curious, innocent, we
fell in
beside him and asked if he was looking for something
written in some way darker or more obscure, in the ink of
drawn blood, or etched by fire on stone, or invisibly
on the currents of air or water, or shaped into certainties of
scripture, Chinese classic or Hebrew law, but he only
mumbled something
written and shambled off, which intrigued us, distracted us,
confused us, frustrated us, finally drove us to be mean, so
that we left
written taunts, curses and insults on scraps of paper slipped
into the garbage, or scattered along the alley as if in lentil
trails but leading nowhere, or rolled
into tubes and pushed through the meshes of torn fences or
broken shopping carts, it was strange how long
we went on like that, generations passing, however
unwritten, as cooks, as crossing guards, as garbage
collectors, as dishwashers, as news vendors, as servers we
rose and fell
like the corn while our insults, curses and taunts never
answered in time weakened, faltered, fell to more oblique
warnings, then to counsels or advice, then to pleadings
disclosures and requests, then to confessions, intimacies and
diary entries and finally to thoughts
we had just thought that day, through all of this
he was every day sighted less often, his once insistent stench
receding, finally evaporating altogether even as we found
that our discarded
written scraps, which every day with less reason we seeded
along the alleys, were the next day gone, as if taken up in
the night, by others
like him we imagined, with one eye rolling, reeking and in
rags, we imagined, but it was impossible to know
what these others otherwise would be like, what they would
be thinking or saying as they turned the scraps over in their
hands.