WALKING IN A BACKWARD WAY
Even though it is dawn at ebb tide and the ocean reveals
Her sea bushes, it is still night here, among the dark cabbages
Of Chekhov and nice seeking a teaspoon of darkness.
Nights of infidelity and longing go on forever; this is why
Tuber plants have roots than point down to the darkness; Folleto
The Italian fairie with backward turned feet must walk backwards.
We live down here in the abode of the insane widow and Einstein’s
Retarded brother; here, there is contradistinction, flip-sidedness and
Yes, even the earth’s poles get elided. This is the backwoods of cosmos.
For all of the kosherness and predilections for things to go right,
The lynch pin upon which reality hangs somehow drops, the wagon
Falls over the cliff. Even watchful eyes cannot avoid calamity.
Since I am accustomed to failure, a smoke of sadness blows from my
Poems. Every winter, I let in a wind that fills my lungs with catarrh;
For this, I suffer the ill winds of my Sun that is square to my Saturn.
Yes, the shoats hide in this darkness for they know that their throats are
Open to the knife of light gleaming on the butcher’s steel. Whenever police
Set up sobriety points, they know there are many who walk backward.
Suffice to say we cannot live without a certain amount of darkness; things
Recede into the darkness precisely because we walk backwards. Without
This backward motion there are no dawns without a sinking sunset.