Transcendence of Janus

I am not asleep, but I see

a limb, the fingers of death, the ghost

of an anonymous painter

leaving the prints of death

on the wall; the bright feathers

of soft birds blowing

away in the forest;

the bones of fish and

the white backs of strange women;

your breathing

like the slow thunder

on the other side of some river

as you sleep beside me; old

dancing teachers weeping in their offices;

toads with bellies as quiet

as girls asleep in mansions, dreaming

of saddles and pulling the sheets

between their legs; fireflies

going to sleep on moonseed flowers

around a plantation gazebo at dawn;

a girl sweating in bed; hawks drifting

through the moon; a woman’s hair,

the flavor of death, floating

in the fog like a flag

on a ship full of ghosts,

the ghosts of soldiers

searching for the graves of their mothers; june bugs

listening to Leoncavallo;

christ weeping on Coney Island,

inevitable, like a fissure

in a faggot’s ass; a widower

with no sons, a lonesome janitor,

a worm in the sun, the dusty sockets

of poets, who have lost their eyes, their

Source: The Singing Knives (Lost Road Publishers, 1979)