From the air to the air, like an empty net,
I went on through streets and thin air, arriving and
leaving behind,
at autumn’s advent, the coin handed out
in the leaves, and between spring and ripe grain,
the fullness that love, as in a glove’s
fall, gives over to us like a long-drawn moon.
(Days of live brilliance in the storm
of bodies: steels transmuted
into silent acid:
nights raveled out to the final flour:
battered stamens of the nuptial land.)
Someone expecting me among violins
met with a world like a buried tower
sinking its spiral deeper than all
the leaves the color of rough sulfur:
and deeper yet, in geologic gold,
like a sword sheathed in meteors
I plunged my turbulent and gentle hand
into the genital quick of the earth.
I bent my head into the deepest waves,
dropped down through sulfurous calm
and went back, as if blind, to the jasmine
of the exhausted human spring.
