Candor is the brightest shield we'll ever know
apart from privacy
—Andrew Maxwell, "Sotto Voce"

Among
ourselves, the contrary, there is
no ‘land' so like the world
that, in a suitable remoteness
one can't tell the difference
between atmosphere
and strained enchantment
Beings of imagination
aren't compelled, at all, they aren't,
that's easy, if there's any way they show
‘a ranging disposition'
someone's really present folks, and
must be close, obscene, plants only rustle
from extraordinary bare necessity—
the deck, the moving painted tree,
even when you hit the floor it hurts
this other way, one sustenance in hand,
a moving trap of shade is a variety
of show-light, you?
Among us
faeries can hold property inside
the ballet states, an entry in the field guide
to locusts, with at least a glow
that turns apart one splinter, and another,
from decaying trees, all home,
overlooked and natural, dead on
as if the life
we might set out to lead were made
available to us
in strongest attitude of opposition
to the ordinary facts
Straining
like an anthem in its leather case
without the notes of wild birds at all
without an instrument, affirmative,
and something else as contrary as poetry
let's say one hundred years ago
but so much more