It's not my fault if it rains and my hide is the only wall
that holds back the besieged city,
the cold, the shadows
and the speeding cars with their headlights shining amid the waters
like the eyes of the cat
like regiments in Flanders:
provisions, cannons, catapults arm an encampment in cattle fields
and the hills,
the state of siege
is an image of courtly love and in the pictures of the insane
is the image of the soul
and the eyes of the cat
always shine when the air is black and everybody already knows it
and at night there is no one who would confuse them with dogs,
girls escaping from home,
between the rain and the liver
there's no room for ice and shadows if one doesn't speak of the Tropics,
of the besieged city
there's no one who speaks, on both sides of the high wall
they bury their dead with no ceremony at all,
under the water
the drums beat prudently, the soldiers urinate in the weeds,
with the wind, nobody worries about the flaming arrows,
about the vat of boiling water,
death, agedness
and in general the things that have to do with the end
are represented by tranquil drums, the flapping of the owl
that settles down
pauses and silence
to bury the dead, here the symbol says that
our sane half helps or eliminates the battered side,
thus salvation
is this sun that circles over the roofs like a picture of Turner,
it's not my fault, Nordic, drenched,
the winter lights
high, curious, oblique, admired, always arrive suddenly
and almost always in time
with death
the images run dry but it's beneficial to note
that in these lights there is no door or stairs ascending to Paradise,
popular image
of Saul, of Elijah, of Jacob, Assumption of Mary,
Ascension of the Lord,
it is the orange tree
that fattens in the land of men that have died,
symbol of Materialism, and stuck their foot
where they can't get it out:
there's no symbol, no name for this.
Like a Figtree on a Gold Course, 1972