and will starve at last on the blue waste.
And you, reckless in the dim rooms
are not now near, in the flush and height
in a confusion of fire, awaiting its end.
Secreted until then and wound in the imminence
we shall forget by day to see,
this is its essense: a ripening gladness
jotted down in the dark under empty covers
like a carving in space withholding light
while lighting the obscure word; lounging life wholly
like a whore, enduring a rancorous heart
and substituting stratagems of the spirit for
a surface pain.
In
the quiet there
they talk of the weather; it happens.
Day, night and man shaking off doubt
laid in the leaves bitten by blizzards
suspended in air behind the quiet house.
It
is as if there were a hired bed
and bright, a jar phosphorously kept
in a dim low-raftered room suspended in air
as nothing ever is. But if there be something
suspended in air it be perfect fear
escaping each morning but gaining its strength
in a senseless syllable seeking the nerve
of nearer water-a visible hole
or cancerous morning space in the embrace.
And small, in the plasm of the mood
in a world of ideas stillborn on the table
