A goateed sage 
chews salvia against toothache 
salivates as the new kitchen maid frosts a cake

The logs of wool jersey plastered with labels 
Lay in the lint and litter, columns in a heap 
Like a Doric temple left at the shipping dock, 

Although it is noon or roughly so, the church below is
   positioned like an hour hand 
at eleven o’clock, 

What can I say? I know the textile trade,
Its crafts, its business, inside and out.
Each side of the Atlantic is the same;

No definition tells you rooms exist:
touch them too hard, too long, and like mimosa
they close against a stem so sightless green

All my girlfriends were talking about sex
and the vibrators they ordered from “Eve’s
Garden” which came with genital portraits

persistent, flowing through fallen shadows,
excavating tunnels, drilling silences,
insisting, running under my pillow,

Because somebody’s father bought a house
sided in aluminum, blue as a robin’s egg,
and used in a through two wars, buying

No one said the spasm of battle would last forever. Nor asked: Is there a violence sadder than the word island? Said: you have found a ruse and will reinvent it forever. Swords will continue to cams from sheaths, the crest will lodge the fiery moon and from now on a tangled mass of sails will signify exalted impatience, not the traditional annoyance of fear.

The gravid gecko lies
aslant a stalk of banana, 
just a tilde over