Excerpted (II)

It is an evil time to be alive.

Tell me that I will assume, in this shape,


In a body composed all through of glass

The blackened atoms, the polluted world.


All I wanted was a white-sided room,

A white reality, involved cleanly


In these spare limbs, this bare, cold-runged chassis,

The transparent and transparented self.


Life as a nude would be this. No charred lungs,

No unsatisfying rest, no failed sleep,


No sweating beneath that high fireball

Set like a tumor in the still mind


Of a dumb god. Life as a cool nude

In a smooth room… Look outside


And tell me that the jaundiced sky is good.

As I say, an evil time


To be alive. Where are the pale tubes

Of my person? With both hands


Find them. Already

I can hardly breathe. Above


A wind like sheaves of music, coffee-stained,

Is coming, roaring, coming loud enough


That all this should be forgotten,

That all this should be forgotten and then some.