The poet's room.

Once it had walls.
Now, between the pictures and the books,
the walls have disappeared
behind frames of color,
behind the smooth, hard spines of knowledge,
delicate with effrontery.

Unseen, the walls keep up
their work, their practical acquiescence
to an impractical man;
stand fast against the noisy
neighbors, the outside wind, the moving dust--
the desire of these to take over.

Pallid, unknown, the walls
manage to contain a life,
to keep it contained
even in the squalor of paper and fume of pipes.
The room continues, plus or minus a cat,
plus or minus a dream.

The poet sits in it, transfixed;
counts iambs, trochees.
It is a rented room only,
but everything inside it is his.
Like the walls, the poet
holds up hidden boundaries
against the inswarm of his nothingness.