Only the morning that understands nothing
shoulders something like tenacity
while sense and nonsense screw themselves
in and out of the eyes of presidents on coins.
A fish peers from the porthole in my chest
on clamorous objects incomprehensible to men,
the orange peels and empty cans, fearing to weep,
that wrap themselves in newspapers and wait sadly
for streets to explode and animals to sing.

The moon on the radio tower wires rolling down
and night moving west across an Arabic parchment,
carved ivory figures that hold fans or chew pipes,
leather tumbling over the nearest falls
and alienated schoolchildren, pools of ash
that cool while the bones of great land beasts
reform in the hands of erector-set trained janitors
and the vast reptile stands superlative
before an audience of the dead,

discovery, endless and without intent,
subverts the walled cities of comfortable chairs,
clean floors, saturated bloodstreams
that crackle perishing on an oilcloth no more useful
than its surface that seemed to keep
when time and sun were acquainted,

the rivets of their jeans ring against the vats
in the strange brewery into which
the characters of my adulthood have disappeared.