A View of the Harbor (1)
Coolly the fire of the drowning day
skips from glass to glass across the bay;
time by time it measures our despair,
note by note; as if it did not care.
Night follows: and then, across the night
marches the fury of mercuric light,
the cranes twist into archaic dark,
impassioned monsters in a monstrous park --
Free at last from pain of human need,
our shadows capture our desires and feed;
power, humming in sixty-cycle trance
teaches its dancing-masters how to dance;
fantastic poisons, housed in spheres of gloom
rejoice and glower, moons and suns of doom,
iron growing from an iron ground
a chorus fills the iron sky with sound -
Ah, but each hair in place, the gods of day
dream of sad gold, and turn their heads away.
copyright © 1998 Gordon Fitch