In that year I was perfect <br />and in mourning <br /> <br />Blue glass tends to replace <br />lapis, I look out and it's <br />winter: from my window <br />I see only afternoons, white <br />silent trumpet flowers, each <br />abiding in its proper exile, come <br />to better terms, wrong air <br />where voice is theft itself <br /> <br />Tamper, tempered, sun throws me <br />like a shadow, very unlike a day <br />between two rains (and in <br />describing, it was that nothing <br />which defended me, dearest <br />unknown, dear why, why not <br />as well: presence <br />of thing without a thing) <br /> <br />Hedge, thicket, shawled <br />shrubs, picket of foliage, leaves <br />green, browning debris: yellow <br />trees in series, short histories <br />of color (four hours <br />of purple, four hours of red): <br />raw vessel of wet winds <br />left wordless, eventual <br /> <br />Wherever risk accumulates <br />and he unlooses all the wings, <br />shifts picture planes, tectonic <br />plates apart: petty exterminations <br />ruined by gone (our lady in <br />the tense "not yet," many <br />things being there, you are <br />elsewhere), the dangers of less <br /> <br />Selfish, I keep all these for me<br /><br />Reginald Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/iconography-says/
