our earth is our dream, false
&
mutable: blacktopped, split
through the geometries of building
&
plowing, daylight
dragged into nighttime in small glass bowls.
Let my body stay as it is, saying
we have done our damage, all
in the name of imagination: let something else
through its mind, mar
the surfaces of things.
GLYN MAXWELL
Dawn on the Midi
In the one pink hour these villas
have to themselves before the English voices;
in the time before the couple
start winding back the eyelids of the windows,
I pass as close as one who needs to see them
can pass to the lost owners
who are riding the end carriage
of the Blue Train to the sheet of light they'd fashioned
to flutter for a time
between them and a future that was waiting
politely by, with hands as disinclined
to mercy as a clock's are,
or smiling at the window
of the First Class then running backwards waving
saddened into smoke though-
two sights she wakes from on a lip of light
and ribbon and remembers where she is now,
mid-afternoon in heaven,
and soon to be seen stepping
the marble staircase, all the hood and fuss
with the viewfinder crucial,
while the twelve at lunch or whist beside the palm-tree
go quiet as now, passing as close as any
who won't see you can pass
