You who are mortal & alarming,
cut your coat out of your own back-
yard. Measure the curve of water with the bare
of your pale & cumbered bones & feel.
Time has already changed the present
so commas are shuddering into periods
of blue. Our longing becomes a shimmering
desert & to come back is alone. I see my face
again in the mirror & that bearing grin becomes
a cistern of disgrace I can’t let go. Is ceci n’est pas
une pipe a poem? I
don’t know. In a dream we are
standing outside the Pantheon, & I wonder could Adam
have known his own loneliness? The poem is a dream
& the desert is blue in light of all this.