I am prowling, my feet are damp.
I am snatching at things to save my life.

It nudges you from your shallow sleep,
it whispers love-mockeries.

Locality is all
you light, and you, as single as a bed.

that tough old bird the gull
hauls across the last-chance bars

As if intensity were a virtue we say
good and. Good and drunk. Good and dead.

Things that divine us we never touch:
The black sounds of the night music,
The Southern Cross, like a kite at the end of its string,

Though the sky still was partly light
Over the campsite clearing
Where some men and boys sat eating

I came out of what was not my mother.
When my eyes cracked in the light,
and I looked up, it was at a germ-lamp,

Your “yet-to-be-dismantled” elms are few,
and by the time you read this may be gone.
In my own childhood we had one or two

Remember where I came from.
Think of a continent of sabled czars.
Leave your home. Let exile fill your mouth