Le Temps Mort

Now the empty frames, the cream of margins,
the zero of the camera’s eye asleep, on the run.
Morning’s slow mucus, and Sixth Avenue
opened, that strip of vowels and fever silhouettes.
While nerves of metal vibrate beneath asphalt,
registering sensation and ailment,
the action resumes on the other side, is always
resuming, and to this, even the dead yawn
out of earshot, off character. Out of scene.
Keep watching, as only rods and cones remain.
And the only sound is the rustle of metaphors
crying out and the surprise is that nothing
we say or do not say or say again can hold
here in the crush of one thing into the other,
none touching the macula, in other words,
the perfectly ordinary mysteries.