Apathy and delirium sun themselves on the porch.
All the old dragons loll along the beach.
Such lightning has rather a hazy lurch.

   What are you cutting down, my boy?
   What are you erasing?
Off the bilgey bottom, off the petrifying weighs

Supine in silence, circled by his breath,
he sleeps with her whose unlatched womb
becomes a bolted room—

If by this wanton surge
Devised for man and beast
When first a green world told

Once, quiet meant discord and pain;
My frantic mind willed hurricane
To blow away its disbelief,

Jerome discovered fifteen signs of doom
each of a day; seas will explode in steam,
man's towers burst into ash, the earth will move,

Hawk free of jess,
the diver springs
toward fire no son can bear,

Through hours of England, swift, my angel, go:
high above towns
and green enormous downs

Always above, on a stair, in a tower,
the diamond-eyed magician treds the air,
and dabbles in the witchcraft of perfection,

Mime the loud wind in pain—
The worded room will yield
Your canny agony