Transfixed by a particular cheap engraving of garlands
Bought for a few francs long ago,
All calligraphic tendril and cross-hatched rondure,
Ten years ago, and crumpled up to stanch
Boughs dripping, whose white gestures filled a cab,
And thought of neither then nor since.
Also, to clasp them, the
small,
red-nailed hand
Of no one
I
can place. Wait. No. Her name, her features
Lie toppled underneath that year's fashions.
The words she must have spoken, setting her face
To fluttering like a veil,
I
cannot hear now,
Let alone understand.
So
that
I
am already on the stair,
As
it were, of where
I
lived,
When the whole structure shudders at my tread
And soundlessly collapses, filling
The air with motes of stone.
Onto the still erect building next door
Are
pressed levels and hues--
Pocked rose, streaked greens, brown whites.
Wires and pipes, snapped off at the roots, quiver.
Well, that
is
what life does.
I
stare
A
moment longer,
so.
And presently
The massive volume of the world
Closes
again.
Upon that book I swear
To abide by what it teaches:
Gospels of ugliness and waste,
Of towering voids, of soiled gusts,
Of a shrieking to be faced
Full into, eyes astream with cold-
