Candor is the brightest shield we'll ever know

apart from privacy

-Andrew Maxwell, "Sotto Voce"

 

Among

ourselves, the contrary, there is

no 'land' so like the world

that, in a suitable remoteness

one can't tell the difference

between atmosphere

and strained enchantment

Beings of imagination

aren't compelled, at all, they aren't,

that's easy, if there's any way they show

'a ranging disposition'

someone's really present folks, and

must be close, obscene, plants only rustle

from extraordinary bare necessity-

the deck, the moving painted tree,

even when you hit the floor it hurts

this other way, one sustenance in hand,

a moving trap of shade is a variety

of show-light, you?

Among us

faeries can hold property inside

the ballet states, an entry in the field guide

to locusts, with at least a glow

that turns apart one splinter, and another,

from decaying trees, all home,

overlooked and natural, dead on

as if the life

we might set out to lead were made

available to us

in strongest attitude of opposition

to the ordinary facts

Straining

like an anthem in its leather case

without the notes of wild birds at all

without an instrument, affirmative,

and something else as contrary as poetry

let's say one hundred years ago

but so much more