1
Here are the figures of impermanent flesh
marring the eternal landscape with desires
so vague they do not shake a single leaf.
I have leaned to them often, as in a sleep,
governing the motion of their continuance
like the wind speaking to the reluctant peach,
urging it softly, chidingly, to sway.
Along their paradisaical wide trimmed lawns
a drooling silence sinks on mystery unachieved.
But past the ghoulish lamps, the painted bubbles
of the eye burst upon the quiet of another field
where a soldier, listening to his wound, bleeds
out his life on bits of mouldy rubble.
2
Man’s wound to man is forgiven in forgetfulness.
Only man’s wound to earth burns all creation
and is etched forever in sullen scars,
compelling the trees, the fruit, the stars even,
to retreat another fatal inch or hour
past imagination’s swollen grasp.
The frenzy of the doomed city is compacted
with the drowsy syncopation of the town.
The broken windmill and the fretful train
together by the hillside, sing agonized duets
of yesterday and today for man’s moist slumbers;
while murder, loyal to no time, climbs a plane,
and goggling in the void, attacks when nobody expects.
3
Pontifical dawn murmurs in the fruit,
in the green sleep of the plant.
Religiously the humbled ant
connives upon a grain of dirt.
A giant world will always turn
for hoarse-voiced starlings who,
fluttering in high jungle dew,
trip on dead root, the imagined worm.
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