The Double
14.08.07 - 3:21 p.m.
Who is it who sat in your chair today,
Eating with your mouth
And speaking with your hands?
It is twenty months since I last watched you eat
Or do anything the living do;
I could have believed you an old photograph, or dead.
Already in my mind's eye you had developed
A black-and-white tinge, beginning to blur,
And here you are alive - and eating. Is it really you?

Amazing to behold; but I am surprised
For you have lost the aura. The aura, you know?
The blaze of light that used to flood the scene
When you entered; the trumpets that used to sound.
You have shrunk. Where is your victor's crown?
Is it an impostor in your place, a No-one from the street,
Who, not being you, scarce knows what to say to me?

If it were really you I know I would feel sad,
Remembering. The old familiar jolt,
Electricity running down my limbs,
The squeeze around my throat. The stab of joy.
But there are none today. So I must conclude
That he who sits close by is your double.

What has he done with you, the boy who broke my heart?
This stranger in your chair is quite a civil fellow,
The words from off his tongue polite and rather formal.
In fact, he is quite outrageously normal,
And not as handsome as you are. Not worth a girl's salt tears.
I can't believe that anyone would mourn for him for years.

Or did you have two bodies all along, to switch at will?
Two faces, that I know - one to love and one to hate;
You put them off and on to recall and to forget,
Two hearts, to match the faces, each to love a different girl,
Two mouths to say to me that you were being torn in two,
And two minds, for you to always be in two minds about me.

Well, hello there Mr Nobody, for Somebody is gone;
You have put him off with ease, as you once put him on.
His head is gone, his heart is gone, his mask has run its length.
So Somebody is vanished, gone on holiday, deceased,
In his place, this person who is nobody to me.
Has Nobody replaced too all your photos with his own?

The stranger in your chair makes small talk and zero trouble,
And goes to buy a drink. He is not you. Just your double.