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DOLOR
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places.
Lonely reception room,lavatory switchboard,
the unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher
ritual 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,dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,glazing the pale hair, the duplicate standard faces.
©Theodore Roethke
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