The children have packed up the light
And gone home for the bedtime story
In which Jack wakes the Sleeping Fury.

Liberal, blue-eyed, shivering, trying not
to look like a bill
collector or detective,

I lived in the poor part of town
where the hookers hung out on the street corners at night,
and sometimes,

I used to pretend I stumbled into the place
casually, after a long day shopping or
I'd pretend I was a drunk

Winter is thick as rock
In the quarry of icy season
And snow squeals underfoot:

you are a broken pane,
or else a bent spoon.

Let them be square as boxes,
more square than milk cartons.

You are there, I am here and the plagiarists
are in the libraries, where they belong.

I rubbed my eyes. The lightning 
Caught a curving line 
Of tents and lost them. Under 

Here, where the people chiefly are resigned 
To doubting all the words their leaders use 
(Mass-graves that hold forgotten hopes), they find