All the little notions walk the streets
in scarlet dresses, dressed to kill,
while big and lumbering fresh thoughts
take off their shirts,
their muscles flexing in the midday sun.
The best of guesses strut their stuff,
in alleyways, in sad cafés,
while intimations slink, as ever,
in the cellar dark,
in chapels where the choir never sings;
their books are passed beneath the tables,
and there’s someone singing out of tune
on some blue stage, in smoky light.
The worn-out theories of the old regime
are running scared now
over desert roads, on mountain passes,
hoping they will reach the border safely,
well before the posse
with their rifle-bright ideas
finds them in their flight and picks them off.