At twelve, the disintegration of afternoon

Began, the return to phantomerei, if not

To phantoms. Till then, it had been the other way:

One imagined the violet trees but the trees stood green,

At twelve, as green as ever they would be.

The sky was blue beyond the vaultiest phrase.

Twelve meant as much as: the end of normal time,

Straight up, an élan without harrowing,

The imprescriptible zenith, free of harangue,

Twelve and the first gray second after, a kind

Of violet gray, a green violet, a thread

To weave a shadow’s leg or sleeve, a scrawl

On the pedestal, an ambitious page dog-eared

At the upper night, a pyramid with one side

Like a spectral cut in its perception, a tilt

And its tawny caricature and tawny life,

Another thought, the paramount ado.

Since what we think is never what we see.