My grandfather told me I
was one of the oldest living creatures.

To the lightning bolt, burdened
Interpreter of the quick, bright
Scratch.

The light is a grinder of knives jangling his bells
For seven in the morning. He is all the steeples
In the town calling for whatever this day must be new made.

The lapse of all streams is a form of weeping,
And the heaving swell of the sea.

There is no death in the sun. I know it will look far otherwise
to anyone watching from shore, anyone standing

at the blue Aegean, pointing up at a mythical bird soaring

And we were no more scattered
Like swallows, or flowing from the broken
Hill like shards, but the swallows as they were

I will not sleep.
Men sleep and the beasts sleep, and no one watches.
The paid watchmen going their rounds

That old scene—monkey see and monkey do—
is done. That organizing grind, the grid,
is barred. Guerilla movements must exclude