shadows of cows in a pond once
became emblems of the heat

You describe a crocodile in a lake, an anchor sunk

The logic of sleep tells me I can see without eyes,
insists I abandon measurement and calculation.

You bend into me, low
as a fountain’s stump of water,

   The one I am huge and daring for. For whom these hours
   orient, tides furiously reform

Here I am among them—guards
and scholars, lovers, even the shy ones,

I love how love enables all those good-
not-great minds to decide we don’t get it.

Why are they looking at me with such hate?
Why can’t I just remember what I said?

The French can lie, and yet again can lie;
they lie standing or sitting, if so required.

I could laugh, but instead a kind of pity
finds me, compels me actually to pray,