Nor can I gather within myself the swell
which might be me or might be something
imagining itself behind the bright awning;
yellow perhaps in the summer garden
which opens the door of drought, the hide
rotting over bones, stench.
I cannot imagine art into myself:
it means nothing.
This dust which drifts, fine, illuminated
by the strange sun I think I am, it reflects
image after image.
None of these things are any longer real,
they have gone into their other furnaces,
that house, that gesture, that animal.
They are the light dancing in the bottom of a glass
of water, aimlessly itself,
casting its ripples on the walls, which might be
read, perhaps, that endless hunger.
But legibility defeats it, a script of light
which is no longer light.
Useful as god.
A voice is a crude instrument: it calls
for what it knows, it speaks the infant cry
over and over again, it cannot stop itself,
its life, it says itself only until the dark
ceases its play.