"How Much Longer Will I Be Able to Inhabit the Divine Sepulcher..."

        How much longer will I be able to inhabit the divine sepulcher
	Of life, my great love?  Do dolphins plunge bottomward
	To find the light?  Or is it rock
	That is searched?  Unrelentingly?  Huh.  And if some day
	 
        Men with orange shovels come to break open the rock
	Which encases me, what about the light that comes in then?
	What about the smell of the light?
	What about the moss?
	 
        In pilgrim times he wounded me
	Since then I only lie
	My bed of light is a furnace choking me
	With hell (and sometimes I hear salt water dripping).
	 
        I mean it—because I’m one of the few
	To have held my breath under the house.  I’ll trade
	One red sucker for two blue ones.  I’m
	Named Tom.  The
	 
        Light bounces off mossy rocks down to me
	In this glen (the neat villa! Which
	When he’d had he would not had he of
	And jests under the smarting of privet
	 
        Which on hot spring nights perfumes the empty rooms
	With the smell of sperm flushed down toilets
	On hot summer afternoons within sight of the sea.
	If you knew why then professor) reads
	 
        To his friends: Drink to me only with
	And the reader is carried away
	By a great shadow under the sea.
	Behind the steering wheel
	 
        The boy took out his own forehead.
	His girlfriend’s head was a green bag
	Of narcissus stems.  “OK you win
	But meet me anyway at Cohen’s Drug Store
	 
        In 22 minutes.”  What a marvel is ancient man!
	Under the tulip roots he has figured out a way to be a religious animal
	And would be a mathematician.  But where in unsuitable heaven
	Can he get the heat that will make him grow?
	 
        For he needs something or will forever remain a dwarf,
	Though a perfect one, and possessing a normal-sized brain
	But he has got to be released by giants from things.
	And as the plant grows older it realizes it will never be a tree,
	 
        Will probably always be haunted by a bee
	And cultivates stupid impressions
	So as not to become part of the dirt.  The dirt
	Is mounting like a sea.  And we say goodbye
	 
        Shaking hands in front of the crashing of the waves
	That gives our words lonesomeness, and make these flabby hands seem ours—
	Hands that are always writing things
	On mirrors for people to see later—
	 
        Do you want them to water
	Plant, tear listlessly among the exchangeable ivy—
	Carrying food to mouth, touching genitals—
	But no doubt you have understood
	 
        It all now and I am a fool.  It remains
	For me to get better, and to understand you so
	Like a chair-sized man.  Boots
	Were heard on the floor above.  In the garden the sunlight was still purple
	 
        But what buzzed in it had changed slightly
	But not forever . . . but casting its shadow
	On sticks, and looking around for an opening in the air, was quite as if it had never refused to exist differently.  Guys
	In the yard handled the belt he had made
	 
        Stars
	Painted the garage roof crimson and black
	He is not a man
	Who can read these signs . . . his bones were stays . . .
	 
        And even refused to live
	In a world and refunded the hiss
	Of all that exists terribly near us
	Like you, my love, and light.
	 
        For what is obedience but the air around us
	To the house?  For which the federal men came
	In a minute after the sidewalk
	Had taken you home? (“Latin . . . blossom . . .”)
	 
        After which you led me to water
	And bade me drink, which I did, owing to your kindness.
	You would not let me out for two days and three nights,
	Bringing me books bound in wild thyme and scented wild grasses
	 
        As if reading had any interest for me, you . . .
	Now you are laughing.
	Darkness interrupts my story.
	Turn on the light.
	 
        Meanwhile what I am going to do?
	I am growing up again, in school, the crisis will be very soon.
	And you twist the darkness in your fingers, you
	Who are slightly older . . .
	 
        Who are you, anyway?
	And it is the color of sand,
	The darkness, as it sifts through your hand
	Because what does anything mean,
	 
        The ivy and the sand?  The boat
	Pulled up on the shore?  Am I wonder,
	Strategically, and in the light
	Of the long sepulcher that hid death and hides me?