VALEDICTORY

Winter awaits, although impatiently
in a sepulchre of darkling browns

the inviolate stars'
sweet fragrances rustling

out to breezes made almost miracle
of marbled infinity. Shade drips;
the grass crosses my fingers
where I lie looking up-

on the radiant spreads of foliages
pinching within day's darkest heart

homing in its nocturnals
its sad motions of a Sun

dying while attempting Escape
from Mortality in a mad ball of brilliance

dumb! in his too splendid panic

The still Autumn, palpable,
Decay cruelly burning on

the Howls of the bark of trees
constipated with dry years of the witnessing Dust

(numb & silent, soft caresses & the waltzing
disrobements ) Shouts! of the street people

crowd the trees leaving in the mute
sensations of cool interpreted stars'
distant glances & the sensitive World

lights! as I turn

Time, dusting us ever with its
beginnings, turning & turning
through each minute's sixty portraits

extensive streets wind into thin compasses
... Those further reaches, this distance

and The Meaning! the authentic
Meaning of all Time sepulchred
in sleeping proportions Nameless

half-stretched on th'lawn momentarily
flashes by in my Brain turned only
to Itself, while self-closed constellations sink

windowless down their mirrored images--