"Dust".
Face powder, gun powder, talcum of anthrax, shavings of steel,
crematoria ash, chips of crumbling poetry paper,
all these in my lock-box, and dust, tanks, tempests,
temples of dust.
Saw-, silk-, chalk-dust and chaff,
the dust the drool of a bull swinging its head as it dreams
its death slobs out on.
Death dust even from that scoured, scraped littoral
of the Aegean, troops streaming across it
at those who that day, that age or forever would be foe,
worthy of being dust for.
Last, hovering dust of the harvest,
brief as the half-instant hitch in the flight of the hawk,
as the poplets of light through the leaves of the bronzing
maples.
Animal dust, mineral, mental, all hoarded not in the jar
of sexy Pandora, not in the ark where the dust of the holy
aspiring to congeal as glorious mud-thing still writhes--
Just this leathery, crackled, obsolete box, heart-sized
or brain, rusted lock shattered, hinge howling with glee
to be lifted again.
Face powder, gun powder, dust, darling dust.