73

no, I carry hods, I’m a sideloader, cement mixer:
I deal in avoirdupois, millstones swing my perfect

neck (low), I lumbersomely sway: I carry
weight: but the tug of the encircling

sings me to the storm drain: am I about to
be or am I being moved by the waters: will

the speed climb as the circles shrink: has most
of my world gone on before me: is this it:

is the voice of gravity calling up through
the grill or grid or whatever it is: should

I be turning around to cry goodbyes before
I’m too busy whirling: alas, another,

perhaps the original, hole “black as a pit,”
nothing returns from: am I going down the

drain: or am I out still, languid in the long
curvings: (is one not born to delight in the

presence thereof of that which is—or is
spring pollen to bother one): is nothing

sacred: all is: I mean, if a rattlesnake
whirls out of the brushwork and hangs into you

that is terrifyingly sacred: and when
you have wintered with a dark dead rose, the

springing of the dewy rose is sweetly sacred:
in respect to the sacred, you should get

out of the way of a loose log slipping down the
hill, and watch it when chill turns the rain

slick: if a high wind wrinkles the lake the
sharp-lit ruffles are sacred: and when the

lion snarls and bites in the ecstasy, that is
the glory thereof: nothing, not a single

thing, is secular: but beyond the fact that
everything is sacred nothing whatever is to be

made of it: we do not know whose machinery it
is if it is anyone’s: is cum nasty: well,

yes, but there are fire-threads in it that
stitch together life: and what about the mean

old egg: it comes looking: and it kills
thousands for the one it can’t refuse, that

won’t be refused, the raper of walls and
chemical warfare: alas, the lean cry of the

newborn dik the cheetah squeezes, isn’t that
awful: but the cheetah lies down to her

sucklings: the milk that flows is sacred: I
suppose I could go on: it looks as if I could:

in my last (and nearly first) review from
England, it is observed that I am on automatic,

good lord, is there so little to consider that
it must be reconsidered: throw the abundance

away: wipe it off, shove it over: we are
without limits: except for the little black

bean within us, still in its skin, awaiting
rain: inside that is a darker harder bean:

it is the vitality: it is a hard
bean: it holds the reaching peripheries in

check: