My head emerging from this paper box—
not heavy but sufficiently opaque
and put there up across my balding pate
by my own hands—expecting sounds of tocsins
ringing wild for freedom, finds, instead,
a kind of dull suppression hung like fish-
smells in the rain-sogged air, a mild attrition
of the senses. Augmentation should
have followed exit: hasn’t it been said
that heroes never get their mettle proved
until they’re out, since getting in is easy?