To lie on a beach after
looking at old poems: how
slow untroubled by any
grouch of mine or yours, Father
alike with solitary
divers, cripples, yelling girls
and pipestem kids. He does what
suits us all; and somewhere — there,
out there, where the high tight sails
are going — he wears a white
death flag of foam for us, far
out, for when we want it. So
on Gea’s breast, the broad nurse
who bears with me, I think of
adolescence: that sad boy
I was, thoughts crusted with ice
on the treadmill of self-love,
Narcissus damned, who yet brought
like a coal in a hallow
stalk, the seed of fire that runs
through my veins now. I praise that
sad boy now, who having no
hope, did not blow out his brains.
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