Enveloped by shadow, covered by dust,

on one of my shelves sits a wooden rook:

this chess piece is an ugly thing to look

at, crude, many-splintered, lacking all gust,

as if someone the carving did entrust

to some blind man who very soon forsook

all hope and sloppily produced that crook

of a piece that more than a guest nonplussed.

I was a child when in my grandpa's shed

I shaped and contemplated it with joy;

in all my life (that ethereal alloy

of thoughts and dreams and ifs inside my head)

on this shelf contorted on itself stands

the one thing I made proudly with my hands.