If I blow sparks from my nose
it will be for this house of marrow
going up slowly in flesh;
the workmen’s care
is the care of nations
building chambers for atom fusion,
for bringing water molecules around
as fire, we work lab to lab
at new alchemies in this dark age.

I will build us a house
near the furrow’s shoulder
like the burning heap
a child I saw slept on,
his parents watching, migrants,
while they picked black eyes and backaches of artichokes
and washed to him under the sun
more seaweed or spindrift than men.

Stretched sky is sometimes
a right whale, sometimes a tarantula or a beetle.
I feel like a man reeling in a dolphin
with calm soft words.
Let me be your photographer,
your proofs against your look of fish.
The house will go up easily,
confusion is only in real things.