Wednesday, September 18, 2019

The Heads that Tilt Down, the Pipes in the Ears

It is not here, the external world.
There is only the senses' veil.

The amusements have dropped like stiff leaves
To a bare and endless field.

We are nothing without their glint.
I am left a scarecrow in the void,

A kind of display, in the twists of the straw,
Of what once filled the air with meaning

But now makes less fuss than a ghost
Or the wind over empty spaces,

The voice that filled its clothes
Now flows through distant grasses.

Summer lies dead on the ground.
The dry light spreads blindness

As a kind of mourning, the sheet
Brought over the eyes.

Here is a place filled with feeling
Where all that almost realized goes

In monumental shadows and distorted lines,
Hope's final sublimation.

The man who lives here carries a bag
Stuffed with what's left of the earth.

I do not share, even that, when he offers,
The dust is still too much like home.