Better a jungle in the head than rootless concrete. Better to stand bewildered by the fireflies' crooked street; winter lamps do not show where the sidewalk is lost, nor can these tongues of snow speak for the Holy Ghost; the self-increasing silence of words dropped from a roof points along iron railings, direction, in not proof. But best is this night surf with slow scriptures of sand, that sends, not quite a seraph, but a late cormorant, whose fading cry propels through phosphorescent shoal what, in my childhood gospels, used to be called the Soul. |
© 1987