In the elaborate elusion of a question,
I lose myself in lustrance, monstrances,
And remonstration. Everything seems real,
But a vague disquiet pervades
It all; the seeing image flickers like crushed
Candy on the edge of a knife, dull is a life
Blade skinning time and wrinkled tears
Off an onion. Things seem to come in pairs: good
And evil, being and death, time
And the absence of time, literature, its opposite, progression.
If only the sweetness of autumn fruit could dribble
On my tongue, I'd make some sense of the mess, the dirty
Piles of laundry, the quick-sand scraping the pavement,
The glass-like prisms and prisons of life. Most of all,
Existence would no longer be a game, but linger on,
The grandest obsession of all -- wings would move
In the scale, and the flicker of a lingering pine-limb would be
The most natural thing in the world.