The maestro, in his Paris hotel, clicks
the television on. A girl with a purple mohawk
chops at the Wall with a hatchet, blasting

Morning came, in buckles and lace,
asking to be held. The birds began
with sultry murmurs, their notes soon rising like sirens.

Through the blown clouds and the plate glass,
sunlight slides across the chrome fountains.
The Muzak drones like some huge machine

I descend on Holborn's escalator
watching my wives pass by on the opposite side,
smiling, waving at me; they shout in Swedish,

Io a scatter of wool and its own litter
the skull stares out at the road below: socket rings
cool as trigger-guards. The furled-paper sinuses

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

What was I thinking of (not Tintern
Abbey, that's for sure, more likely you—
mean: we were on honeymoon)

I dream you, and you come to me
intact, in focus, indiscreet, mouthing
the sweetest lies as if we cared.

Horses with wings and horses with shoes.
White stallions sacrificed to Roman gods.
Scythian kings buried with fifty horses.

Because of your own natural sense of death,
death's stench in the fur, in the follicles, sweat glands,
death in the roots of the teeth, it's right