Silhouette

        Of how that current ran in, and turned
	In the climate of the indecent moment
	And became an act,
	I may not tell.  The road
	Ran down there and was afterwards there
	So that no further borrowing
	Of criticism or the desire to add pleasure
	Was ever seen that way again.
	 
        In the blank mouths
	Of your oppressors, however, much
	Was seen to provoke.  And the way
	Though discontinuous, and intermittent, sometimes
	Not heard of for years at a time, did,
	Nonetheless, move up, although, to his surprise
	It was inside the house,
	And always getting narrower.
	 
        There is no telling to what lengths,
	What mannerisms and fictitious subterranean
	Flowerings next to the cement he might have
	Been driven.  But it all turned out another way.
	So cozy, so ornery, tempted always,
	Yet not thinking in his 1964 Ford
	Of the price of anything, the grapes, and her tantalizing touch
	So near that the fish in the aquarium
	Hung close to the glass, suspended, yet he never knew her
	Except behind the curtain.  The catastrophe
	Buried in the stair carpet stayed there
	And never corrupted anybody.
	And one day he grew up, and the horizon
	Stammered politely.  The sky was like muslin.
	And still in the old house no one ever answered the bell.