From a work in progress.

You have kissed the wig.

Have stood between the window and its drapery

and looked out onto the street

like a spy at his assassin,

like an assassin at his woman,

like a woman at herself.

You have brought your lunch up here

to the very offices of time.

From that escrow dark patches fall.

They have fallen “on me also.”

Beneath the planks of the conceit the ground

is very far.

But you have kissed the wig.

Have fused the starry principal.

Have stood the plinth of finance

from which angels crowd and watch

the air happening

gradually to them.

Your boyhood home will hang

like Absalom on air

in Edom where the air

stirs harmless in the sealess dunes

all the unpeopled months of principal time.

This all Saul sang,

did sing, selah and limping there,

brackish to the very

crotch and destitute. Drip drip, went the well.

My hate has made me well.

No person in between.