The hour has the flavor of its time.

the reflecting pool is stagnant
deserts pursue their mirages.

He watches the weather’s sepia

There is a mushroom called
solitary inkwell
also black egg

practicing the lash
on his wooden top
a child stays very real

then he can do nothing but sleep
repudiating
childhood and adulthood and old age.

the grass fire can be seen
raising its smokes

Wild horses folded into their last night. 
One burrowed against the dead’s descending heat 
as three cantered from the threadbare wood. 

After Africa, Surbiton:
An unheated house, and flag-stoned pavements;
No colobus monkeys, no cheetahs scouring the plains.

veined blossoms falling, the face, lightly
tattooed, of a god