You must not show her face. Only the hands
where each granite planetary knuckle
slowly pales as if submerged in water, stripped down as after seizure,
those hands that now hold nothing.

(You had a plan for me. You wrote in your notebooks—you plotted, reasoned, schemed. to bring me into being. (But reason is a fragile wing).

These are the objects, the touchable—table, refrigerator, chair,
grease-splattered whiteness and woodgrain.
And here is the sound of the baby muttering and cooing,

Out of the imagination.
Out of the brooding brain.
Out of the urban nest, lined in desires scaveng'd from

She knows it does not matter what she dared or did not dare;
It does not matter now, accursed, to the myth-making village.

He ends the world in icy trumpets of wrath; his god is angry
   and unkind.
His god has sent a worm to diminish us.

Therefore, my father, teach me your satisfaction and delight.

One fist made I lower my sights
to the left hand the sinister one. I count
now the misfortunes of my neighbour.

And Neptune the king of the mists
out there beyond the reaching finger of Jesus.

Look at the eyes, burnished black beads
and the sharp yellow of the beak and inside