II
White goose by palm tree, palm ragged, among stones the white
oleander,
And the she-goat, brown, under pink oleander, waits.
I do not
think
that anything in the world will move, not goat, not
gander.
Goat-droppings are fresh in the hot dust; not yet the beetle; the sun
beats,
And under blue shadow of mountain, over blue-braiding sea-shadow,
The gull hangs white; whiter than white against mountain-mass,
The gull extends motionless on the shelf of air, on substance of
shadow.
The gull, at an eye-blink, will, into the astonishing statement of sun,
pass.
All night, next door, the defective child cried; now squats in the dust
where the lizard goes.
The wife of the
gobbo
sits under vine leaves, she suffers, her eyes
glare.
The engaged ones sit in the privacy of bemusement, heads bent, the
classic pose.
And the beetle will work, the gull comment the irrelevant anguish of
air.
But in the moment of your laughter let the molecular dance of the
stone-dark glimmer like joy in the stone's dream,
And in that instant of possibility, let
gobbo, gobbo's
wife, and us,
and all, take hands and sing: redeem, redeem!
III
The child next door
is
defective because the mother,
Seven brats already in that purlieu of dirt,
Took a pill, or did something to herself she thought would not hurt,
But it did, and no good, for there came this monstrous other.
