Things are not as we would have them be. / The moon is not a yellow sow /
hung from a meat hook // on a drab shed wall: it is a moon. /
Ashes do nothing / while we sleep: they are trees. //
Satellites are not boys circling the low-back chairs /
and record heaps of their drunken masters: they are machines. /
The board-hipped distended form stepping in the foam. //
is not someone going to wet her legs / but no one, phantom without live taxis. /
she thinks,
Ships in the night are cruel ships. //
Even if, her left ear aimed at the brack / even if the claps and peeling lulled /
she would not hear the canvas smack //
there would be no din in the hull /
no luminations in the masts: /
tonight the moon soils its pallet //
and what will emerge in the light by my bedside but No One, /
her gown ratty from seawater and sand and from bedless cubicles /
bedowned by whirling feathered things.