Sprung

The hundred clocks of April 
Strike the hour at once, 
Scattering the flighty 
Treetops like a gun;

Shattering the silence,
Clanging on and on;
Clamoring like children;
Shivering like gongs;

Splashing like a raindrop;
Surging like a throng;
Sending out their singing 
Bird automatons;

Springing up like flowers; 
Showering like stones; 
Ringing like an un-
Attended telephone. 

Upward Mobility

The bricks as they have grown apart
Have drawn a secret stair
Beginning at the building’s floor 
And ending in thin air,

Where someone’s laundered linen waves 
And dances in the breeze
Above a darkened alleyway
Between two one-way streets. 

Thrift

On one side, people feasted 
On mounds of low-priced junk, 
Gorging themselves like beasts 
On stale and moldy hunks; 

On the other side, they waited 
In line, their bloated trunks 
Bursting with chewed up waste,
And took turns blowing chunks. 

Ardath Bey

The glint between the barely parted 
Eyelids first, like distant stars,
Or candles swamped in seas of tar, 
Grows brighter slowly — small, twinned sparks
Fanned by the words a man has started 
Speaking; and though the dusty heart 
No longer beats, the dry lips part
In an awful moan, devoid of art 
Or meaning; he moves; the other darts 
For safety, screaming — it isn’t far 
Enough; more screams; the screen goes dark. 

Lohse

Abandoned in unplanned-for haste, 
As if before a storm, 
The houses, he would later say, 
Had seemed to him “still warm.”

Half-eaten meals congealed on plates;
The children’s toys lay strewn
Haphazardly across the floors
Of freshly silenced rooms. 

He took the silverware and tossed
The Torahs in the fire.
He took the paintings from the walls 
And left some hooks and wire. 

He even took the furniture, 

The better to enjoy 
The skill of the Old Masters as
The owners were destroyed. 

The Gnat

There is some kind of gnat 
Drowning in what 
To it must seem a vat 
Of wine, but which in fact 
Is merely a glass, 
And half full at that. 
Half empty, perhaps, 
If you are the gnat. 

Earthworks

They lie atop
The giant mounds 
Of earth like giant 
Crumbling crowns 
Upon the furrowed,
Weathered brows
Of ancient kings
Who lie here now,
Beneath the hills,
And wear them still.