Auto in sunlight: every trace of gloss
Is dulled a rusting green.
Even the fenders are a dirty chrome

On the long brick walls, human names:
Even the roofs were signed:

Hydrant spilling
Its chipped, heavy mouth

As if we arrived through the blind extremes
of sleep, we opened our mouths, eyes closed,
and the priest laid on our tongues his coins

Take the moment we’re living in, the traces
of words just inches from your lips.

Our own hands are never pure enough.

Who’s to say where the man ends,
the world begins; what it is
that wakes him in a visible sweat,

How faceless their pathos, the ovals
of these heads, huge, smooth, hermetic
as eggs, and solemn, especially the man’s

You could be turning it in your fingers like a planet.
A knife would do, if you're good with knives,
bracing the hard fruit in your slender hand;