I shall never get you put together entirely, br Pieced, glued, and properly jointed. br Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles br Proceed from your great lips. br It's worse than a barnyard. br br Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle, br Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. br Thirty years now I have labored br To dredge the silt from your throat. br I am none the wiser. br br Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of Lysol br I crawl like an ant in mourning br Over the weedy acres of your brow br To mend the immense skull-plates and clear br The bald, white tumuli of your eyes. br br A blue sky out of the Oresteia br Arches above us. O father, all by yourself br You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum. br I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress. br Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered br br In their old anarchy to the horizon-line. br It would take more than a lightning-stroke br To create such a ruin. br Nights, I squat in the cornucopia br Of your left ear, out of the wind, br br Counting the red stars and those of plum-color. br The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue. br My hours are married to shadow. br No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel br On the blank stones of the landing.