Coral-bells purpled the fallen sycamore leaves, dead, the dead
versus those who attempted death, versus those who effectively
fashioned out of such attempts a style akin to electric guitar
shimmer swelling and unswelling like starlings when they first

lift off, or like stars when, from their fixed sway, they come
suddenly loose, any man letting at last go of a career spent
swallowing—trying to—catastrophe's jewel-studded tail, un-
swallowable, because

holy, in the way of fanfare, its gift for
persuasion, how it can make of what's ordinary, and therefore
flawed of course, a thing that's holy, for a time it seemed so,
didn't restlessness seem to be, little god of making, no less

impossible in the end than any of the gods, where's the holiness,
they sleep never, they tire infrequently, to be tired bores them,
distraction refined by damage would be their drug of choice
hands down, if they could choose, even they don't get to.