THE FIEND
He has only to pass by a tree moodily walking head down
A worried accountant not 'with it and he is swarming
He
is
gliding up the underside light of leaves upfloating
In a seersucker suit passing window after window of her building.
He finds her at last, chewing
gum
talking on the telephone.
The wind sways
him
softly comfortably sighing she must bathe
Or sleep. She gets up, and he follows her along the branch
Into another room. She stands there for a moment and the teddy bear
On the bed feels its guts spin as she takes it by the leg and tosses
It off. She touches one button at her throat, and rigor mortis
Slithers into his pockets, making everything there--keys, pen
And secret love--stand up. He brings from those depths the knife
And flicks it open it glints on the moon one time carries
Through the dead walls making a wormy static on the TV screen.
He parts the swarm of gnats that live excitedly at this perilous level
Parts the rarified light high windows give out into inhabited trees
Opens his lower body to the moon. This night the apartments are sinking
To ground level
burying their sleepers in the soil
burying all floors
But the one where a sullen shop-girl gets ready to take a shower,
Her hair in rigid curlers, and the rest. When she gives up
Her aqua terry-cloth robe the one wind quits in mid-tree the birds
Freeze to their perches round his head a purely human light
Comes out of a one-man oak around her an energy-field she stands
Rooted not turning to anything else then begins to move like a saint
Her stressed nipples rising like things about to crawl off her as he gets
A hold on himself. With that clasp she changes senses something
Some breath through the fragile walls some all-seeing eye
Of
God
some touch that enfolds her body some hand come up out of roots
That carries her as she moves swaying at this rare height. She wraps
