My shade has holes through which the day

Intrudes, an imaginary cloisonné 


Where bits and pieces of the views

Ignore the bodies for the clues.


My blurry early morning stare

Fleshes in the parts not there


To put together nature's lights

From punctures that the sun ignites:


Pinpoints linked across a maze

That feathers in the nights and days


The way pixels on a TV do,

When an image looks at you,


As circus barkers guess your age

By using crow's feet as a gauge,


So that the outside's rude debris

Springs from random filigree,


The planet's bones, the forest's limbs

Blinking from the window's whims,


Not from an glazier's feat,

But from the linen's damaged sheet,


The very height of crepe de Chine

Topped by dropouts in its screen,


Sight imprisoned in a lavaliere,

Sifted through a starstruck weir -


But the vision's waking flaw

Is the one we seem to draw: 


It's only human to have pores

In the skin of Levolors, 


And through its twinkling constellations 

Shine the planet's punctuations, 


The cuneiform that lives 

Behind the eyesights's picky sieves,


Blind enough, but strangely see-through

To underlying cosmic shades of blue.  



August 14th, 1988


September 29th and 30th, 2005

Rue de Varenne

October 21st, 2005