Classic Poem

You have to imagine
a darkness like that
in a sealed coffin and then
double the darkness
for this occupant
who is not only in-
side his cocoon but
inside his body — as-
suming worms are like us,
at least when dormant —

and in that blackness
how he lives (or is lived)
and dreams (or is dreamt)
through his own com-
posting, his person sieved
into its atoms and re-
cycled while yet exempt
from diminishment. ... Quite
the contrary! Mythology
is upon us: Ovid
is all true and some-
where, to some crowd,
madcap Brother Blue —
in his starry ephod
like a priest of Isis —
does his dance in the street
that anything could
so angelically come
" through Identity Crisis! "











By permission of the author.