Cleanliness

Often, in the Repose of Evening her soul took a lightness from
the mountains across, although the day was harsh and
tomorrow foreign.

But, when it darkened well and out came the priest’s hand over
the little garden of the dead, She

Alone, Standing, with the few domestics of the night—the blowing
rosemary and the murmur of smoke from the kilns—
at sea’s entry, wakeful

I saw the hand of Rasputin
cast in bronze and used as an oversized
paperweight on someone’s desk.
The authentic hand. Smooth as Italian leather.
It was molded from plaster before he was killed.
Bought at an auction in Europe.
She was a collector.
She knew the value of everything.

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.

Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There’s something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart

you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to
right from the beginning—a relationship based on
good sense and thoughtfulness in little things

i would like to be loved for such simple attainments
as breathing regularly and not falling down too often
or because my eyes are brown or my father left-handed

and to be on the safe side i wouldn’t mind if somehow
i became entangled in your perception of admirable objects

My God, I heard this day
That none doth build a stately habitation
But he that means to dwell therein.
What house more stately hath there been,
Or can be, than is man, to whose creation
All things are in decay?

For man is ev'ry thing,