For many it’s creamy candies if anything
And clustered tiny white florets
Diaphanous tutus en pointe
But see the flecks of shit in the sugar
The flies on the flowers
Dimly aware though perhaps denying
Our own discomfiture
Delegating the vehicles’ repair
Trying to raise a lawn
And the unimaginable sickness
Half in love with easeful death
His soft names in many a musèd rhyme
Or perhaps a barely audible groan
Or perhaps a drawn-out lustful moan
That issues from the vortex of images
Flesh peeling rapidly in the blast
Or slowly deep in the silent tomb
The bloated corpse trapped under water
And the heaping midden covered
With palmetto and sour shrubs
And red berries for birds to eat
Birds crashing into windows
Or sliced by guy-wires
The human skulls teeth worn down
From the grit of bivalves
And how to pry the recalcitrant shells
Flint too brittle and uncured rock too blunt
The plug of antler a perfect mallet
Those noble achievements buried
By misadventure or deliberate harm
By Portuguese by Spanish by French English or Dutch
By Christianity bullion and circular coin
By sword labor and old-world virus