Believing that numbers steal the moon,
writers are forgiven their poor tools:
lanterns, flashlights,
that mumble in the dark like stars.
When the antique leaves off and antiquity begins,
immunity is lost and susceptibility enters.
Soon everyone is ready to believe anything.
Symbol covers sign, iron angers bronze,
even the black sock croons to the shoe
last night where I threw it.
Under the sun is one thing, but my notions
come from a plain day below the moon,
where unweariable angels in their ordinary
Elizabethan descriptions tone down their appearance
and the rocks take on moss and caddis worms
despite the current, and my face stays on its surface,
and in the mirror.
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