The symposium

"The symposium 

I come alone 

I leave alone 

alone with two hundred others 

in the hot and airless and electric room. 

Do you do this for your pleasure? 

A secret vice on borrowed time, 

my children do survive  

from four to six without me. 

Where is the reality? 

Does this crowd still exist 

when I am in my kitchen? 

And the ideas, do they hover in the hall 

when we all leave 

or do they escape through our heads 

or pockets 

to spread their seeds 

or shrivel up on stony soil, 

or did they evaporate already? "