Face powder, gun powder, talcum of anthrax,

shavings of steel, crematoria ash, chips

of crumbling poetry paper—all these in my lock-box,

and dust, tanks, tempests, temples of dust.

Saw-, silk-, chalk-dust and chaff,

the dust the drool of a bull swinging its head

as it dreams its death

slobs out on; dust even from that scoured,

scraped littoral of the Aegean,

troops streaming screaming across it

at those who that day, that age or forever

would be foe, worthy of being dust for.

Last, hovering dust of the harvest, brief

as the half-instant hitch in the flight

of the hawk, as the poplets of light

through the leaves of the bronzing maples.

Animal dust, mineral, mental, all hoarded

not in the jar of sexy Pandora, not

in the ark where the dust of the holy aspiring

to congeal as glorious mud-thing still writhes—

Just this leathery, crackled, obsolete box,

heart-sized or brain, rusted lock shattered,

hinge howling with glee to be lifted again …

Face powder, gun powder, dust, darling dust.