After this echo Of a whale’s call Finishes traveling Through the blues To reach that eternal other, Perhaps surfacing now As a white spume Of music from a blowhole,

What shall remain Of me, is a cage Of whale bone, To be whittled away By the finders, into Bead necklaces for The restless deities of Erasure, whose razor like Hands perpetually caress Time’s face.

Today rain drifting through The avenues plated in gold And rust of autumn, carrying It’s little black umbrella, Becomes a partner in this self Discourse on the quickening Impulse of eros and the catalogue Of sins this other me partakes from Often: hiding of real motives, Lusts masquerading as loves, and false grief At each of these backed by weak resolve Not to repeat them. The body stays innocent, Perpetually, with wine and dancing.

So now that the self is quieted enough, By the rain from all the whirling noise Of this city with its symphonies and rock arenas, To call for a truce and observe a Sabbath Of ten or fifteen minutes, I, Impelled by a resistance to unlived sermons, Sit here at a desk, hacking away in these Lines, a clearing for that invisible world, Which these words shall never touch.