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.