Even the ancient, open gate —whose hinges may
as well be stone, whose purpose has always been

After the plague had come and gone a second time,
after the panic, after the convulsive festival,

As you might expect, my momentary vision barely
qualifies: you know, sensation something like the merest

The least touchable of all things,
it wears our dwindled world

I watch your hospital TV as you sleep,
two weeks you sleep, while men walk
in a silent movie, their world eroding

These junipers growing out from the yellow rocks
   now in the sunlight near the top of the steep slope
under its split cliff face and these dwarf oaks returning

The ice again in my sleep it was following someone
   it thought was me in the dark and I recognized its white 
                                                                                            tongue

High noon in the park, as the year begins its
onward march to truly infernal weather.
“Is it hot enough for you?” yell the normal,

It’s slippery, the little by little you’re left with.
thread of a peacock in profile
glimpsed on a chimney,

His shadow in the frescos
Is the first admitted
Into a picture. Before this,