{POETRY IS A DESTRUCTIVE FORCE, after Wallace Stevens}

Misfortune followed misfortune. Childhood
Grew tuneless. The gentle springs & bubbling
Brooks found they could no longer hum
For which the wolf and owl howled deep
Into the noon-tide of the sun, misplacing
The day for night. For 7 years, the perfectly
Full moon did not return. Where the sun had
Failed to sail the weight of the world right-round,
The wind lost first her voice, then all her songs.
School auditoriums and courthouse halls
Ticked counter-clockwise like a soldier who
Marches up the hill for a battering.
School boys stopped flipping their caps backward,
Wearing instead habits of priests and monks.
But there would be no sanctuary to
find, no orderly line of salvation
To follow readily. Their scroll-book of sin(s)
Would be more than any Hollywood set
Or Silver scene could possibly picture
Where the Lion roamed and slept among deserted
Grains of time, with 100 grand-daddy legs,
Dreaming, without a heart, of the Rome that he had
Abandoned or had abandoned what was left of him.