Corsage

Mind’s residue is vein-violet
(old women with their stockings
hanging down)—gorged with
color and superb as light.
“The spangled riddle is twitter
and purr,” the mussels murmured. 
Then departed.
                      Of an evening,
in the empty park, sometimes I hear
the rustle of revival-meeting
pamphlets. Band music, with
surrealist trumpets, knifes the air.
Eagles with tusks perform in sieves.
The ectoplasm of Immanuel Kant unwittingly appears.

These bilious things, fracturing
the night’s surface, swerve
into graphs, hanging like crags in jagged lines:
—profound, perfect
and not without meaning.