Monday or Tuesday.

figures and their bright eyes, while outside a van
discharges, Miss Thingummy drinks tea at her
desk, and plate-glass preserves fur coats—

Flaunted, leaf-light, drifting at corners, blown
across the wheels, silver-splashed, home or not
home, gathered, scattered, squandered in separate
scales, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled—
and truth?

Now to recollect by the fireside on the white
square of marble. From ivory depths words
rising shed their blackness, blossom and pen-
trate. Fallen the book; in the flame, in the
smoke, in the momentary sparks—or now voyag-
ing, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath
and the Indian seas, while space rushes blue and
stars glint—truth? or now, content with close-
ness?

Lazy and indifferent the heron returns; the
sky veils her stars; then bares them.

37

B2021.2.33