And I said flash. I said dome.
I said sea as broken glass,
sea glutted with fish, split fish
constellating, shivering wholly
and crowding towards the vanishing point.
I said too a punishing scar of sand
and amidst airborne palpitations of sand,
a figure: swarthy statuette, a child,
legs akimbo, who moved impatiently.

Dark was the sop of the garden
and animals rushing.
For the first time you saw their faces,
inchoate as they are and various.
How like you torrid progress, homo claudus?

My confidant, gathered in bullrushes,
shook his brother’s will
and I drew hand over long obstacle
and blew of lungs, fastening waters.

And when the word withdrew its labour,
the world from Varanasi to Leningrad,
Dimashq to the New World, was not let be –
subcutaneous tremors and pearly foam
slung all ways, campanili singing strange news.

And now this season of distance is come,
a year outleant before me like a whale
whose beached brow faints ad infinitum of sun,
and I cannot write, all of Cana’an waiting.