Bartleby the Scrivener

Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!
--Herman Melville

Perhaps he lost the language of desire,
hope checking out first
with its twin baggage of want and need,
hunger leaving no forwarding address.

Or maybe the language of etiquette
surrendered its meaning,
the tongue holding diplomacy hostage
behind a green folding screen.

Let’s presume he was stunned into silence
by God’s loneliness, by the fixed glare
of the black wall just beyond
the small side-window courting a dim light.

So much to prefer not to while the grass
and sky stitched together a singular void,
and the bud of Existentialism took root
deep within his heart, denial sprouting

against the dead letters and bricks
that merged into a mortuary of self-interest.
He knew nothingness soon becomes a stranger
to no one; preferring it was his last resistance.