Debilitating nostalgia for the list of lists
I can’t even enumerate the items on this desk
The scraps of paper bearing
Telephone numbers without a name
The to-do list of tasks
No longer possible to perform
The headphones’ quarter-inch adapter
The prophet’s severed head
The deity seated on the head of a dragon
The clipping of my Nobel Prize ceremony

I begin instead to make a list of partial objects
The spring in the ballpoint pen
The volume knob
But another list obtrudes
Of those factors that prevent my compiling a list
Starting with my deficient application to a task
Not an effect of the peculiar global situation
But nothing more than a perennial defect

I begin instead to make a list of perennial defects
Starting with the compulsion to list perennial defects

How about a list of factors that make life worth living
Books and films and songs and favorite foods
The button nose on the face of a child
The obnoxious cat who converses charmingly
The comradery of friends
The companionship of the beloved
But these things are joys in themselves
And do not demand a list

None would write save under compulsion
To alter and augment a rule of Dr. Johnson
Who needs no augmentation
So no compendium is truly compendious
But a one-sided sample of the merely compulsory
A compendium of problems irritants and enigmas