The birds with fiery plumage perched
like epaulets on the general's statue

And fountains where girls sun their legs
dipping their toes in the cool ripples

 

At the bus stop a blind man sells colored pencils.
Ballpoint pens, too, at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Ten cents for a pencil, two bits for a pen.

In the Kyi Valley of Tibet, a snow-white desert
where an orchestra of lamas performs by starlight for the gods,
it is said that when we near death, and may least suspect it,

Here is a piece of required reading 
at the end of our century 
the end of a millenium that began with the crusades

Displayed in the coin shop window 
below the Spanish doubloons and Flemish guilders, 
in a row of talismans on felt cushions, 

A wall of fire steals across the prairie 
and the string quartet in the downstairs parlor 
breaks off suddenly when a blizzard of light invades our sleep,