The Projectionist

Poem

The Projectionist

What, he asked himself –

the old man, the man alone

day after day in his booth

as if enacting an eternal,

solitary Sukkoth –

what is that shadow there,

there on the stippled ceiling

of my room. And who

(if it’s not impolite to ask it

of my memory’s inhabitants),

who made it first, and why?

It couldn’t have been me,

who hasn’t moved for ages –

only now and then to think,

you know, of all the others

that I might one day become.