Although I mean it, and project the meaning

As hard as I can into its brushed-metal surface,

It cannot, in this deteriorating climate, pick up

Where I leave off. It sees the Japanese text

(About two men making love on a foam-rubber bed)

As among the most massive secretions of the human spirit.

Its part is in the shade, beyond the iron spikes of the fence,

Mixing red with blue. As the day wears on

Those who come to seem reasonable are shouted down

(Why you old goat! Look who’s talkin’. Let’s see you

Climb off that tower—the waterworks architecture, both stupid and

Grandly humorous at the same time, is a kind of mask for him,

Like a seal’s face. Time and the weather

Don’t always go hand in hand, as here: sometimes

One is slanted sideways, disappears for awhile.

Then later it’s forget-me-not time, and rapturous

Clouds appear above the lawn, and the rose tells

The old old story, the pearl of the orient, occluded

And still apt to rise at times).

A few black smudges

On the outer boulevards, like squashed midges

And the truth becomes a hole, something one has always known,

A heaviness in the trees, and no one can say

Where it comes from, or how long it will stay—

A randomness, a darkness of one’s own.