An Old Man Is But A Paltry Thing*

Euameus 620

herding the coincidence

with these giants, killing time

knee-deep in bullshit artists

hacks and cramped con-men

what was that thing that

reminded us of mariners? Oh

yeah, it was in our hands

the thing that lied while it

gave names to the gospels of melodrama

in a quiet mind you may

describe yourself as a straightened

resident of imagination

a bowl-legged poet in love with spelling

an inventor of crimes meant to pass as probabilities

Eumaeus 621

In the eye of night

we fall through the ice

it is the shape of our want

the splendid blood and

the number of our days

we pass under the sun

forgetting to mention it

even in the museum of the unmistakable touch

we confuse phantoms for fish

and a fish for a shoe

we are washed in the waves

of the beautiful shore where

we harvest triangles for

the listeners of reason

(For Gerry Dubuque)

Eumaeus 622

heavily slowly piously passing

working the wrecks of

the splashers of viruses

and makers of rain

marking the sailor's last visits

on the courses of the temporary

this morning is cured by

composing committees and

and cleansing our limbs of

all that's amazing

we wait at the bay

as it easily lies to the water

watchers of horses, we

sing of our time in

this brief space of day

*"...An old man is but a paltry thing, a
tattered coat on a stick,...."

W.B. Yeats - Sailing To Byzantium