Slowdown Day

The daft of it is my slowdown day
still ticks at light-speed, a photoplay
of russet leaves, the window blacks
through the glass, in the autumn of the shade,
in stacks of curious pattern no one made.
All came alive beyond the look-no-further,
A funny place that's everywhere;
Like murder, there's nothing to compare.
Natural death is a day like this,
like no thing on earth is.

The daybed wavering on a sinking

dais of vegetation, the dream

that brought to summer vegetal thinking,

suspires, rueful at the dwindling life stream,

and the end of blinking.

That's the good of it. September

pulls the whole matter into the earth,

all slough flushed in rains to umber

kingdoms where the ashes may rebirth.

The daybed on which I lie my mind made whole.

Doubt any but this, Sweet Valor: the soul

Of all phenomena is unknown to you.

The ground of your existence is imposed

on the place you dwell.

And now, exposed in the full

arrangement to which hell is opposed,

which golden arc is yours, I sing,

though dogged by this sharp pain of olden,

something in me disjoint to my pose,

does embolden it upon me, who am its rose.

Days shall fungo through the flicker

into the declinings of the afternoon.

And the bats of my rethinking

Shrivel up the clock at six. Soon

the swells of evening will heave
the lullaby. The refugees

are all abed on dingy feathers.

In the beyond, in the look-no-further,

In the stacks of curious pattern a murmur made.