And tightens until language can’t bear this
Hollowing, crash cart, Please. In the silence,
A bus slithers by.

The raging distemper finally forced me to breed
a new brand of silence.

Siren girls sang somewhere. A boat rocked. She could see
nothing, really. No clairvoyant forecasts.

She said as the cab passed the building
She’d passed in her childhood, is pathos.
Its mean little whip of pity. The force field filled

Pres spoke in a language
“of his own.” What did he say, between the
horn line

Well let’s assume it’s yes, but this is not a conversation
for the telephone, you know, our ears
have vigilant listeners, so let’s just prepare it in

What is a verse not to be thought
in the oval rows of the stadium, where
crowded

You have come to the edge in your T-shirt and tennis shoes,
the trail map snapping in the sudden wind, and there,

like nothing you had imagined, nothing

The imagination, improvising, translated burly leather 
into an overcoat of armor, converted brawn to iron. 
For wrinkled folds, die-tooled metal plates 

At first puzzlement, then joy.

My baby in the making—surely my last—
would, like a ferry heading for a wharf,
know what to do along the way.