Cold and final, the
Shuts down its fabled summer house;
Blue views are boarded up; our sweet
Dwindles in the hour-glass.
Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid
Tangling in the tide's green
Now fold their wings like bats and
Into the attic of the skull.
We are not what we might be; what we
Outlaws all
Beyond the interval of now and here:
White whales are gone with the white ocean.
A lone beachcomber squats among the
Of kaleidoscope
Probing fractured Venus with a
Under a tent of taunting gulls.
No sea-change decks the sunken shank of
That chucks in backtrack of the wave;
Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on,
A grain of sand is all we have.
Water will run by; the actual
Will scrupulously rise and set;
No little man lives in the exacting
And that is that, is that, is that.
