It’s the sea—calm, flat—and the tides of spring,
with their distant thunder, are retiring.
The waves shall return, rolling, reverberating.
Do you hear the night crabs grating?
It’s the dry Styx: Though a wanderer, ragpicker Diogenes,
bearing his lamp, retains his solemn dignity.
Along the black stream, poets perverse and roguish
Use their hollow skulls instead of lines to fish.
It’s the field: Which, to glean dirty lint, strikes
down the hideous harpies in their spiraling flight.
The guttersnipe hides in the rat’s lair to escape
the sons of Bondy, nocturnal harvesters of the grape.
It’s death: The police sleep. Love, on high,
takes a nap while sucking on the meat of a heavy thigh,
where the extinguished kiss leaves its red grooves.
The hour is lonely—listen—not a dream moves.
It’s life-listen-the living source is crooning
the eternal song on the sticky head of a swooning
god, who pulls his naked green limbs like a waning tide
up onto a bed in the morgue—and the eyes open wide.