1417

1416

So human,

You are hungry but cannot eat.

You are heavy with the sidewalk, the trees,

Overtopped with this impenetrable.

The sun at night prevents sleep,

It presses your eyelids, you think: red shutters.

You speak a private code,

The others turn away.

The words you recognize,

The sense has slipped elsewhere.

What was lifted floats away

Into a sky you thought was blue long ago.

1415

1414

1413

1412

1411

Desire seems horizoned small

In the manifold of hours,

As minute a resident in such a place

As the lips upon your face.

When two dimensions intersect

The stronger bends the way

The magnetic curl a sunny wind

Compulsion skew a day.

But your person is become a point

In potential's plastic scope

Mere pucker in a canted field

Hedged by a weary trope.

1410

1409

1408

1407

1406

1405

1404

1403

1402

1401

What sanctity is not hollow

That is not a stone to itself,

Without self-sense?

What tolls within the city square

Without an hour's intent,

But an ear that hears no summons?

What hangs upon a wall

Unparented by art,

But a hand to blankness by compulsion bent?

The many blind have consecration;

The one unseen, consummation.

1400

1399

1398

1397

1396

1395

1394

1393
Seeking not a breath but all airs
I am blind to what's before me.
Book, not page,
Makes a moment nought,
And your face a blur
For telling how you fit.
A shadow-world stays my waking eye,
Mere objects and hours
Are between what it would hold;
Yet itself is what it sees,
Unsized upon a sizeless stage.

1392

1391

1390