flickers across the bed.
I reach for you,
brush the hair from your face,

I am exhumed on the express
Out of the aftermath of five,
And though I starve on consciousness

The sun hangs on the blistered rock,
The Jew hangs in the sun;
The clamorers are done

The knots tied by a river
become lost ends as the tangles
and meanders separate, cut off

Dozens of swans and geese
launched on its tar-black surface.
Sixteen tiny jellyfish

Underneath the damask rose
The marriage lace is torn.
Lift up loblolly days to disclose

The notion of living entities in human shape, intelligent but not human: look upon it as an experiment conducted upon the stuff of being. Shall they be smaller than we? Bushier, perhaps? What impulses bring about these particular condensations? To what extent do the alien existences depend upon certain crystallizations of our own thought, perhaps upon our very words? Shall we postulate elves, speaking the word aloud so as to give life to a certain meaningful vibration? 

Nothing happened here—nothing ever
happened in our city, and yet it was destroyed.
What could the innocent citizens have done?

That love of hospitality 
                                                 & the old Irish 
passion for food and drink            (good food, 

1.
There’s a sign near the waterfront
I think it’s advertising cheer:
says 400 years, virginia spirits. A swig.

A year ago last night, my dead crowd me
an even ceremony
of Jamestown, at the schooner

that brought those first here.
They think: long trip
did not yet know, not the longest part