Look, This Is the World

Who am I to question someone
Else’s righteousness? For myself

I am selfish. I cannot and should not
Deny it. I can’t. As for the genuine

Or dissembling self-deception or
Righteousness of others, it is not mine

To claim or denounce. When I have done,
I suspect it has been when I have been

Most dissembling and self-deceiving myself
Or whenever I pretend, simply pretend,

To contain a purity caught in my sieve. I am
A weir for snatching the eeling beast

Out of the current it’s swimming in, not
An unholed jug for holding clear water in.

Why is it so hard to accept you must be,
Or very likely could be, better than me?

I am almost human, too. But I collect
My heartbeats like an unfortunate elder

Keeps cats, a hedge against this house
Of dust and emptiness, which is not mine,

Never my house, no house ever my house,
Only where I hunker down with the crowd

Of my pounding heart. I have windows.
I let my heartbeats go through them, to go

Hunting as the pulse takes them, listening,
Free to come or go. Look, this is the world.