Mousia, the clock is still
and I circle your breasts like a beggar.
Like a violet-colored colt I’m nipping
at the faint herbage of your soigné lipstick.
Shades of railway arches are chiseling messages
across the very sod I whipsaw on…I am yours
until the cockcrow, until the chants begin.

Plume. Dam. Tangled. Copse, listen to me:
one more grimace of Pernod. The inhabitants,
mostly pickpockets, have contributed heaving
teeter-totters for the victims of insomnia.
Cups of tea and slices of toast are left
for the sharpshooter to see,
and grandchildren are groomed for the festival.

Mousia, resistance. Mousia, please respond now
that I sway in chains, now that I have inherited
this jerking, bobbing leverage, and the grass-blades
imperceptibly graze on the pinto beans. Mousia,
your silken forelock and corridor-eyes, your stamping,
tossing bronchitis I kneel before, your imprisoned
penny’s worth of terrain I name catastrophe.