less finished than a roughly painted slur
of images once solid, seething through
the wide-spread plumes of sloppy noon, it stays
unstopped within its own barky surge
and sways like multi-handed drunk Pierrot
muscular contracting boughs blur
clear eyes of undiscovered blue
try to blind them with the squeaking rays -
all in vain, for those just blink and dodge
watch them crash and start again to grow:
heaves and pants, all covered with the foam
velvet clusters, like a wounded beast’s
vision, and this velvet is
dense and avid that the sky above
much more distant than it wants to be:
and when it rises, it begins to roam
along the walls of badly shattered mists
soaked in illusions, which it cannot ease,
and hides a purple-winged dormant dove
under the crust of wooden misery