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.