Who’s to say where the man ends,
the world begins; what it is
that wakes him in a visible sweat,

How faceless their pathos, the ovals
of these heads, huge, smooth, hermetic
as eggs, and solemn, especially the man’s

You could be turning it in your fingers like a planet.
A knife would do, if you're good with knives,
bracing the hard fruit in your slender hand;

You were sculpted on a prow,
Time wore you away as the foam might have done,
It closed your eyes one stormy night,

Doubly silent the afternoon
By virtue of empty summer, and of a flame
Overflowing, is it from this vase

Knock,
Knock forever.

In the lure of the threshold.

It’s dawn. Has this lamp finished, then,
Its task of hope, hand resting
In the mirror fogged up over the fever

Despite one querulous, raised paw,
the ermine is being held. I am not.
Unseemly, it claws