What grows in that place is possessed of an unexpected beauty all its own

Suppose Gauguin bad never seen Tahiti. Suppose the beche-de-mer and sandalwood trade bad not materialized
and the Polynesian gods held fast in the fruit of Nuku Hiva and the milk-and-honey waters of Eiao.

Even though
You've written home to Nancy
Clear-headed, twice this week

The wheel went round and left me
on a block of broken bottles,
spirits spent. So where

Locality is all
you light, and you, as single as a bed.

As if intensity were a virtue we say
good and. Good and drunk. Good and dead.

that tough old bird the gull
hauls across the last-chance bars

His watch is wicked, going on
without him. Pass your hand
across the blue man’s lips and

We fix the ages of the irises at flower,
stop the eons of the oranges at fruit.
For ripe is ready when we eat, and beautiful is full

It begins simply with nail scissors, clipping, the ends of a few hairs from the edge of his beard. Finally, after a week, he begins to notice that his beard isn’t growing.