For makers of elaborated worlds, adorned and peopled by the creatures and the furniture of their inventions. For those who live as if the way things are were not enough and mean, by their words, to do something about it. For those who would protect the first beloved from the fresh reality of the second. For fabricators of plausible excuses that will save

When visiting a distant (and imponderable) shire,
one longs to hear the cry "Hygrometer!
Fresh hygrometer for sale!" Yes, and when the fair

The surgeon Celsus, at the time of Christ,
Said the right hand should operate
On the left eye, the left hand should invade

Stumbling midnight tipsy in Jackson's studio,
who knocked black paint over into tomorrow
and throbbing rainbows of our morning after?

The dim prospects from this window make me ask
if should I hold you in the half-light—when morning

swaddles me in partial truth, when the difficulties

The sun is fierce over the slum of Kibera
and the iron roofs wrinkle into eyelids
sleepily tilting over damp mud walls.

Port with the tossed deck, whipping
Sheep-bends between the coiled lines.
We lean. Our faith in bracing and ballast.

I escaped, spinning off
   to heaven knows what
         location, eluding

It might be von Hirsau believed he composed
a celebration, these wood panels brushed
with egg and tempera, a medieval man's rendering

Refugees flee their homes. Exiles
move back in, thirty-year echoes
of mortar shells rattling windows.