The radio is a pile of transmissions, like much else.
And anger is a handbasket full of sound and sweet notes
left on the doorstep. Last year
more than four million American babies were born
and there’s not too much that that can mean.
A dream watches other dreams
like an animal fighting itself
within a burlap sack. Many minutes pass.
And marvelous springtime eyes its own predictable mess
as new life trembles beneath the wind.
A religion found only on mountaintops
composes songs for the future, as you climb stairs
climbed by the past. A magnetic field
forces its demands upon the world, like a dog, drunk again.
Therefore, foreign policy is yet another irony.
Leafing through a photo album is history and architecture:
in a photograph, what replaces memory is a pose
that does not change, regardless of whether the picture
is held close to the face, like this,
or very far from the face, like this.
