Though the road turn at last   
to death’s ordinary door,   
and we knock there, ready   
to enter and it opens
easily for us,
                     yet
all the long journey
we shall have gone in chains,   
fed on knowledge-apples   
acrid and riddled with grubs.

We taste other food that life,   
like a charitable...

Pale, then enkindled,
light
advancing,
emblazoning
summits of palm and pine,

the dew
lingering,
scripture of
scintillas.

Soon the roar
of mowers
cropping the already short
grass of lawns,

men with long-nozzled
cylinders of pesticide
poking at weeds,
at moss in cracks of cement,

and louder roar
of helicopters off to spray
vineyards where braceros try
to hold their breath,

and...

I like to find   
what's not found   
at once, but lies

within something of another nature,   
in repose, distinct.   
Gull feathers of glass, hidden

in white pulp: the bones of squid   
which I pull out and lay
blade by blade on the draining board—

       tapered as if for...