Science was a walk in the woods
Where my neighbour's dad did his lecturing.
It was a tiny metal cannister, kept

Are exhibitions of bad taste on a scale
Beyond belief, filling your living room
With mud or lava, blowing the schoolhouse roof

Slicing the sphere in planes you map inside
The secret sections filled up with the forms
That gave us mind, free-hand asymmetries

Remembering that war, I’d near believe
We didn’t need the enemy, with whom
Our dark encounters were confused and few

For a saving grace, we didn’t see our dead,
Who rarely bothered coming home to die
But simply stayed away out there

A library with endless shelves: the halls
Receding into binding-lined allées.
And every book a life, hardbound and standing

A man says yes without knowing
how to decide even what the question is,
and is caught up, and then is carried along

Then I arrived at the capital, vaguely saturated
with fog and rain. What streets were those?
The garments of 1921 were breeding

Now this is it, said Death,
and as far as I could see
Death was looking at me.

I keep a blue bottle.
Inside it an ear and a portrait.
When the night dominates