Two Poems by Michael Ondaatje

A Billiard Hall, Cress Sandwiches, Wallpaper, a Piano Solo

Beckett, they say, read his Bible for style,
Stendhal the Napoleonic Code.

The Ames billiard hall in The Hustler
during the first thirty-five minutes. And again
in the final scene.

Or a slower duration of time
during the ball in The Leopard, and in the memory game
in Days and Nights in the Forest.

Picnics by Monet, Titian, the Elder Bruegel, grand lunches
in the Bois de Boulogne with concealed orchestras in a grove,
or Ratty with Mole consuming cold chicken ham pickled gherkins
french rolls cress sandwiches ginger beer, along their river.

The wallpaper in Proust’s bedroom, 1882, while he was a boy.

“Les Oignons!” by Sidney Bechet, Paris, 1949, shouted aloud
    as everybody danced.

That piano version of “The Man That Got Away” by Bill Charlap
you listened to, solitary at midnight, his slow thoughtful chords
defeating the great damned eloquence of the words

during those hours when we lose interest in what needs to be done.