This new world defies sublimation.
Villagers, come to witness and welcome,

Their feet must be crossed, ankle over ankle,
so no man can swim through and enter.

On cleared earth, kittens play in bowls or are
forever dozing. Milk goats wait to be milked.

My classmates straighten and fall
quiet in their chairs, ready to go
home, their fingers interlocked

At Christmastime in sixth grade I gave out
three dozen Berol Black Warrior pencils,

For noble persons, madness seems to have been
A matter of custom--in the old romances.
Alas! I shall be mad, they say, and at once

It should be entered from the old quarter
At its center, the easiest part to get lost in.
—It happened to many of us here, as children:

His shadow in the frescos
Is the first admitted
Into a picture. Before this,

Dr. Redacted will tell me not to tell you
this, like this,
in a poem: how it’s all right, love, that we don’t love
living.

The morning flew by.
Not that it matters, it’s nothing
like flying, or finding a dime behind a cushion,