It’s true in life things happen once.
Sparrows quip like flat stones
skipping on the bay. Walter Pater wrote
that beauty insinuates as rhyme, songs
turning words into pictures.
Already it is tomorrow, or
two hundred years ago.
All possible relation
precedes us as a realm.
Though there is no fluctuation
in the strength of this compliment,
alienated bitterness is now
our industrial ivory tower.
Fear is the new money.
In secret times arithmetic
perfectly symbolized the sun—
the romance of train travel,
lakeside lemon-cake carousels
unevenly revolving on pins.
Applying the rule of proportionality
to analogical judgement, still
the swallow calls
across spotted water, singing
A la lay—
