Trolled

Dolls Left Alone

When we’re away from them, they are bereft
as lap dogs unable to understand what has gone
wrong. When they grasp an idea, it is
with such gratitude, and they try to hold on,
but then it gets lost in the general welter
of weather and television. They’re all right
as long as something is happening
but when their lives become a void,
when they simply are not in our thoughts,
they become depressed, unmoored.
They wear the same clothes for days
at a time. They lose their knack
for polite conversation. When they fall over,
they may not get up for a week.
Music does not make them stir.
In this, as in so much else, they are like us,
which is not to be wondered at,
for we created them in our image.
Some of them even know how to cry.
But they’re not real tears, and neither are these.

—Tom Disch