Perfection stills, admits nothing,
like these white grains cupped and blinding
in lilac light—.
What its object “feels,”
if feeling’s relevant,
is weight, the burden of surprise,
an iced admonishment
of months coming to fruit
on the vagrant summer’s dark green
lustrous skins.
Nostalgia’s excess
has been banished.
The new reign’s virgin syllables,
in papery increments,
whisper their descent:
This is what you must turn to.
This zeroed sensation.
This blow to sprawl.
Horizons frozen
by a yield of white.
Growth is not virtue.
So the body becomes a statue
in puritan dress.
Nothing to do but stand there
and bear it, revoked,
while perfection lands each earnest
inimical stroke.