What life
after the photograph
of the granddaughters

goodbye to the sun 
my father 
who blessed me 

At the age of three
I was promised in marriage
to a neighboring princess

—one finger chiromantic exercise—

It sums our vital force and our will.
Cowards had theirs sliced and in Sparta

Hug me, mother of noise. 
Find me a hiding place. 
I am afraid of my voice. 

The season of the cut and clear. The bales squared
in the distance, a hollow house, no windows or doors.
The Ns of the fence posts, perforated shadows.

Sweet runs the water ever
out of spring and meadow,
frothing low, rising,

a homely word:
a plosive, a long cry, a quiet stop, a silent letter
          like a storm and the end of a storm,

                I want to tell you, it has nothing to do with trees or luck, that the last carnations crumbling in the gutter, the float stripped down by the rain, even the drum major and the fireman, lifting their beers to the moon, are part of some other show, some other season, which the barkers have never known.

        as he drew the silhouettes

against the vast

         machinery, suspending them,