A candle of train whistles
lights the wrong side of the pattern—
the obverse where its traceries
mushroom over. I have my surveys and
the traffic, stalling retrograde
into a murder of fiddles and tympani
that can barely picnic. In staying in, am I
preparing your mind? Is it that houses
index consciousness? If books detain,
are they houses? If I read your books,
will I again be devoured writhing
by your voice? Will I love the inundations
as much? Have I recited even this too
somewhere else? Or just some other
time, perhaps in that dark salon
tripling time to the lope
of the world’s slowest
castanets.