The dark madonna cut from a knot of wood
has robes whose folds make waves against the grain
and a touching face-noble in side view,

Off

in a huff,

I missed,

almost,

the moral of

a dancer, the Eve

of all such, ever,

In zigzagging overhead cables
strung with ornaments,
in trash, in residual playbills
for holiday events,
in rain and the silver unsplendid
ghost of a winter sun,
sorrow for something ended.

Pack it up, boys; we’re done.

In Ohio, the untried earth lifts
To coax pale horses from the edge of a wet, blue field.
White apple blossoms are unhurried

Field is frozen, it doesn’t move
even as snow starts to cover it.
Nothing grows there.

There is not one leaf left on that tree
on which a bird sits this Christmas morning,

the sky heavy with snow that never arrives,
the sun itself barely rising. In the overcast

Being in Rome, hired to hang around 
a dim little set, 
we film extras are out of the sewers of all creation— 

Past perfect—mode of leaving well enough alone,
                as in he had been here but left:
                flat hand of what can’t be undone now—

The scientists are in terror
                                           and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis accepted blindness

Came Neptunus
                               his mind leaping like dolfins,
These concepts the human mind has attained,