April
days like this, against the scores of weather-vanes
autumn books fighting termites, meals of fleshed out bittermelons,
straw men down the ground, smell of turps
a cloudburst white as a skull
a wash of shocked icebergs, blue and grey
post a downpour that goes mental
down the drains of crocheted streets on a mend
one gets closer to the painted-over graphite sketches
close readings of a scratched horse
who was here a moment
before the signal white christmas and the sauve-qui-peut
rome and seneca, his last hour in the bathtub
willing the drowning lungs go faster
a torpid mass of spent people
the white noises of rotor-blades
to the sea and wagner
a dropping curtain of tropes, of faces
wincing from thousands
heading a scurry
to the footnotes
