(For Annemie Ilsa Heineman and Sylvan Meyer)
Subway-rushed, we squat and run at once
across deciduous cultures, planetary
wastes, fissures, voids, and houses built of cards.
A depraved and lonely god has vouchsafed us
the strange ability to sit together
and watch ourselves rush past the fragment lights,
but never to stop the engine. Jerrybuilt
and fossil, I wonder at my well shod feet.
Still, green endures; naivete exacts
small tax from children and others. I regard
(crisply, through window glass) a dandelion
which, with its own demented bravery,
inhabits a black patch of city earth,
along with several billion grains of used
carbon and one brown crust of old snow.
Some comfort holds to even small defiance.
There was dogma, numbers etched on glass,
ratios of right and wrong. Remember then
how well the solar system capsulated
to brace a week-end or inflate a word!
Unluckily, the glass shivered and tinkled
with one of those explosions over Warsaw,
and Crete slithered beneath gray waves, and dust
was sifted over the unreal cities.
The command endlessly rasped and cracked and cackled
among the warehouse rafters. Chilliness
assailed my armpits and I found I was
not dull enough to hold my nakedness
away from my ego. Naked I embarked,
and walked naked through the arcades of
the war, distributing my caramelli
to waifs and fauntleroys without distinction.
And then, return: the coil and hiss of anger,
hates at bay; the daedal leopards, coy
at golf and conference table; boars and shoats
embracing in a bed of soiled sheets;
and skeletons, cerebrally inclined,
delivering the daily mail, with raps
upon the doors along the streets. Cold winds
wrapped faded newspapers about my legs.
Ilsa and Sylvan, small defiance holds
great comfort. Always some run through the talons
of the voracious, primitive bird that broods
over the world. The pterodactyl peers
abroad out of his black-veined eyes and fails
to note he fails to hear your voices laugh
and whisper underneath the little trees.
And may your laugh henceforth inform your souls.
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