A crescent cent shores up, a new name
in the drip-dry day. And you know, how granted some nucleus,
one glues the rest to toothpicks and standing back, looks to,
maybe mocks, the resultant gait: It will grow, some say, shrooming out of glare
like some golden dolt.
Go, I gut my way
to the choppy capitals of this mirror, and if I look behind me
and my shame is surmised, or it appears
I answer to shame—see that no point of my eye is insulated from
its greeny dead bolts and silken amplifications.
Each false step made a twist in the chains of his meats—
the peacock’s.
(Like a confession burst from his silver vest came
“the pillow word for spring!” Or an expression knocked
from the boxer’s face—an angel’s “No.”)
I am not free to overlook—he thinks,
There is some gentle perspectivist I am yet to meet
and thank;
without formula, she’ll flush my marrow with a blow
and incline my vibratory illustrations toward
homes fat with children’s practice.
Into the eve of the beached the sun’s cane pokes
The eye of the whale—“Set sail, set sail!
Once I was excused
From the table too. My talons sunk
The wood, to love. See that happy stray,
His tail is never far from his ribs! That is how hunger
Comes so close to education.
Oh, for a word on your knees,
To bounce—young, young rays!”
The infrangible is flocking to our head—those words
To which we ran and then from hid.
Here come the wives with sheep in their ears.
One stands sick on silver heels,
Like a question unasked, a question that asks
Too much.
And all they say: “We follow the crashes
From shore to shore—
Everything that breaks of terror
Breaks and is whole again
Never to become
Like once-loves become acquaintances,
Truly erect hardware in a dune.”
David S. MacLean
