“When the dialmaster rounds the southernmost curve
I’ll raze and plunder twilight’s sacristy!”
Certain promises I should not venture to make –
nor should I feign any willingness to keep them.
That fledgling unity which some call style
is plotted out along the paltriest terrain.
How can I contend with the virile and effete?
Through hidden entrances there is little
passage, through long-swollen apertures little way.
So I gather the ashes of fallen clockwork,
scatter them before the portals of dawn.
And when the air has cleared, my secret metaphor
will have been revealed, which in our life pertains to
what is left when the hype has subsided –
patterns, graves, perhaps a grove of pomegranates.
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