1

The rain is speaking quietly,
you can sleep now.

Power rigs drift like lights out past the breakwater,
                                               white, and fluorescent white.
The sea moving them up and down

We fly above Kenitra
Circling so low
I almost smell the fig trees’

Flute—a simple remedy
of which the herb is sound.

My eye is a planet with another motion,

At the failing of summer
just when autumn is breaking
the pavement with its strong back,

It was fever that made the world
burn last summer, that afternoon
when I lay watching the sun pour

The wheel went round and left me
on a block of broken bottles,
spirits spent. So where

And what if now I told you this, let’s say,
By telephone. Would you imagine me
Talking to myself in an empty room,

When I returned to the hive I was one
Among many, in a blistering hum;
A braid of air had brought me far from home,

“Work shall set you free:” a sensible sentiment:
Marx would agree: Freud would give his assent:
Yet take those words and put them on a sign