All he could see from this scene over Bluehill, Maine
(no distortions here: the work is from a seagirted light),
is enough of a world for any man, it seems plain

Because I want to watch them do what I would like to do
if I were free, and because it is late and I am tired
and out for what I say is my nightly walk, I stop

There was a time when
his words made me wet with tears:
Ah, our wedding day.

It pinks the cheeks of speech, or flushes the forehead.
It’s a spring breeze in which words play, a scorching sun
that burns them red, slate clouds that cover them in ice.

He tells of headless people with eyes on their shoulders,
dog-headed people who bark, one-legged people
who hop fast, mouthless people fed by the scent

Somebody takes a photo
of the little girl in a witch’s suit
and it stays in the corner of a mirror

Is this my blue portrait?
Are we living on a dark continent?
Is this my portrait against the darkening year?

I watched Preacher Benson plowing his back garden with a mule
to the sprung clacking of the screen door,
and it’ll sound that way when the century turns.

I can hear you in the bathroom: rinsing, splashing, steaming;
Three different kinds of sound slurred, the elements
Confounded by your actions. (Across the airshaft,

Something about the ironing board made him
leave it behind, angular in the emptied living room,