Not the leaden sky of the Romantics
No dark despair or Letheward plummet
Despair being an irrelevancy
And Lethe a nightmare’s compensation

Opaque yes metallic and gray
But not the product of uranium’s decay
Aluminum perhaps after nights in the dishwasher
A sky milky white with tincture of lampblack

We don’t go to Baudelaire for moral guidance
Who called ennui the deadliest of sins
Privilege of the elect
The secret indolence of their work ethic

But we go to poets for subjective states
Or rather for subjective processes
Reflected in the overcast objective world
Trees denuded by the rain