Several people from Chelsea, seminarians and clergy,

in the wand of the Oxford Movement transported to America,
made their way out to the Territory, out to Wisconsin,

There is so much lonliness in that gold.
The moon of every night is not the moon
That the first Adam saw.

I might have been a martyr. Instead I was
A scourge of martyrs, trying souls in fire.
To save my own soul, I tried tears and prayer,

The story is always the same story,
With every step retraced;
They tell the story in Buenos Aires

Thousands upon thousands of grains of sand,
Rivers that know no rest, the sparkling white
Snowflake more delicate than a shadow, light

   Through the peephole he could see a boy
Playing patience on the huge crimson sofa.
    There was the turkey, the second-best

 Each evening, the sins of the whole world collect here
      like a dew.
In the morning, litde galaxies, they flash out

I am writing from a place you have never been,
Where the trains don’t run, and planes
Don’t land, a place to the west,

If the man who called you nigger in Dominick’s parking lot
had only dialed 1-800-882-Mary earlier today,
he may have been a better boyscout. I bet

The truth is none of our business.
Our adolescent eye-at-the-keyhole rooting
In a sweetheart’s soiled linen for a clue