I
Devils be ready! My curiosity
stalks the outpost of its caution,
and soon I’ll swap anything
from savvy to soul
for one year’s furlough
smackdab in the sleaziest lay-by
you’ve got. Take me at my word,
and now, if you like, before night
digs its purple claws in deep.
Like spilled pollen,
sun coats the horizon: raw heat
fitful as a cautery.
I, too, am burning with a lidless flame.
II
Bluefall after twilight.
Mud and snow hyena-speckle the road.
Through a cataract of frost
rimming the window, I browse
a tiptilted moon, and shake loose
the predatory gaze of two planets.
Jets crossing like motorboats
between the stars
seem only a footstep from each
port of call, a few fathoms perhaps
to a way station
tucked under the hem of night—
a viper’s den, a Marrakesh
full of low-life and baubles
mind never dreamed of, rickety hostels,
banks and beaneries,
phantoms that clack down the streets
like dice, artists and hucksters,
grog-shops and depots,
the misguided, the lost, and the shanghaied.
III
And in that circus mix
where merchants jaw with madmen
neither men nor mad, I want to dawdle,
slouched on the curb,
or strolling ribtight alleys
that ravel like twine;
watching jewelers thrill metal
to carve steel netsukes,
and handymen work miracles
with stupefied wood;
learning alien artforms and lingoes;
gaping at creatures
gaping as spellbound at me,
pirouette for pirouette,
our eyes fumbling one another
like pubescent children;
hearing traders gabble and sign
an argot spiky as hieroglyphics
moaned; talking shop
with gauchos from Aldebaran; clapping eyes
on new and unimagined
monotonies.
IV
My heart’s no émigré;
the glib traffickings of a squirrel
can detain me for hours.
So, too, the mud runes left by a newt.
I try my goodwill on resident aliens
like the earthworm, or the apple.
I know so little about an oyster’s logic,
or why slugs mate acrobatically
from slime gallows.
Earth isn’t small enough for me
to exhaust. Why covet mind-teasers
lightyears away?
A kennelled dog croons in my chest.
I itch all over. I rage to know
what beings like me, stymied by death
and leached by wonder, hug those campfires
night allows,
aching to know the fate of us all,
wallflowers in a waltz of stars.