In the Kyi Valley of Tibet, a snow-white desert
where an orchestra of lamas performs by starlight for the gods,
it is said that when we near death, and may least suspect it,

The birds with fiery plumage perched
like epaulets on the general’s statue

A wall of fire steals across the prairie 
and the string quartet in the downstairs parlor 
breaks off suddenly when a blizzard of light invades our sleep, 

Here is a piece of required reading 
at the end of our century
the end of a millenium that began with the crusades

The Hyperboreans—“people beyond the North Wind” —
according to Diodorus Siculus, inhabited an island
from which the moon “appears to be but a little

At the bus stop a blind man sells colored pencils.
Ballpoint pens, too, at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Ten cents for a pencil, two bits for a pen.

At the edge of the world
where Ocean begins and ends
the great serpent consuming its own tail

the instant the sky wakes my eyes are shut I’m listening to the rainfall huh 
 huh huh listening to half a lifetime of rainfall isn’t romantic
the sound of rainfall approaching unites with the sound of a solitary car

an ant dies, and no one mourns
a bird dies, and no one mourns if it isn’t a crested ibis
a monkey dies, and monkeys mourn

That you made love
on an office desk
on the seventeenth floor