Are you listening to this ocean, its wet lip? Or the neighboring field: all

that can be done has been, but I do believe my pomegranate will yield

a few sacred seeds (that silver treasure-tree), enough to alter darling you

from a terrestrial sop to the queen of shades—and do listen to that snow,

soundless in our ruined amphitheater where the usual tragic play

trundles through its second, bloodbath act, so kneel and say your steady prayers,

take tiny pills, remain a viable human. The king’s people have brought

spades and spears, the flowered ground is doubtless broken—and it dances, the thought

of building our own typhoon: a catastrophe all ours and high damage

at which we’ll laugh not cry. The daughters of the local cineaste await: fringed

with golden manmade light is Newman’s idol face, shines like ripe wheat hissing

from their mother’s scythe. Passion is a painful transformation, not kissing

your fingers to the flickering air but that flesh torn and partaken:

red cell with its hard center, rapture, whirl of those horses, & split ground aching.