We all know where we will be a hundred years from now:
beyond the dailiness of this slow panic
and the fear always present behind the look of denial;

To get to this place, 
you must go through the village which is above.
If you find yourself before the mountain

Hatless, in mocking whiteface, Carl Schurz stands,
tricked by the tempest out of blackest bronze.

the organ teacher says, “If you don’t mind,
I’ll lock you in,” and goes. That rinse of light,
clear and Protestant, stirs an opposite,

He omm’ed a curtsy right at the spiritual!
   —but the Man Upstairs wasn’t listening.

how to cut out and burn the heart, gall and liver
   of a great fish, which was probably a crocodile,

If you're thinking of going to Syracuse,
   be modest and do not expect
the bronze warriors of Reggio

They are nosing the cloudy walls
of the tank with their gaping mouths and flat
unspeculative eyes. Green and rose

It’s breakfast time. For a moment we pause
and taste a hunger like expectancy

the class simply transformed, a chain of satyrs
and maenads wound through my puerile lecture

 

A lovely suburban colonial,
built in the 1950s
(that era of civil defense)
had a bomb shelter in the basement

They have come from dinner at the nearest new restaurant—
you know the kind: bottle glass in the window,
brass rails, and a fanciful line of red neon