I can’t help this week
feeling the fabulous civilizations
are us, folks.
Yes, I have nothing to gripe about:
being lonely and confused
in a splendid universe,
possibly schizophrenic,
taken by black holes, stars
of a constellation born
a thousand million years apart
and all rare things
that flourish in the imagination,
devoted to equality in a system
of continuous and sporadic attraction
that twinkles on human hides;
it’s true, kicking up the grass
is a desperate job.

I can’t go on conjuring uselessly
while the epidemics of vertigo spread,
I want every discovery
in all the sciences, right or no,
recorded on a timetable
and broadcast in simple language
to every corner of the planet.
Why, the one sea has several names
as if an ocelot had blown apart in the night,
nuclei and birth control pills
square off in the wilderness of ice,
a box of cereal dips the garbage can when I pass.
Every urge is a multiple image,
even Bristow knows that.