I crave quiet more than palest sinners
Do their peace of absolution and lift
Toward tolerable circumstance wherein
Green fields flowing beneath warm winds
Play a simple, serene music.
I pray in the gray throng’s heralding din
This drowning siren die away and leave
Faint thhought to famish, feign, or forge beyond
Splitting bone and aching sight in face of
Plain, revolving day’s hissing tread of night.
I lay subtle or naked by degree.
The myth of common speech harbors the vague
Extremity, solidly-stateed airs,
Whims of purchase, the purchases of whim,
All paid with the natio0n’s prismatic mirror.
Then say this man, a spawn of time, should feel
Abrupt and free? Even to imagine
Will-tuned guitars flourishing and dancers
Sweeping across a mosaic of red tile
Inlaid upon the wrecked and shattered ground?
composed around 1990