Train makes knife cuts through the dunes,

pulls its shadow over orbits of corroded

nothing, traces white quartz ribbons

up the long slabs to where grey waterfalls sustain

green lakes. 

 

In the near and everlasting distances appears

the cool rose abstract city: glaze of ruins, fictive

fortress, occult gardens blurred by flowering

briars, scriptures from the minarets and steeples

and, mirrored in the sky, city in reverse: ropes

from the courtyards to the clouds.

 

Long-legged wasps sip sugar from the saucers.

There are six streets called by my family’s name.

A woman worn into several pieces, wrinkled as rope,

knows many bright rooms with window boxes,

bed, shelf and bath, in the quarter of retired

martyrs, mine for a dollar.

.                          

Southern train waits at the station, all people

off; cordial conductor endorses my onward ticket.

Southern engine tumbles its black pitted pistons.

I won’t take rooms—my intention’s for the farthest

south: upside-down mountains, solid sand oceans

and the wind-ripped cypress.

 

This dawn or another: engine and one car, sweet

dates and an oak walking stick: me attending

the unfinished end of the world, to see if there’s 

any more nothing. Wild dogs fade in the chalk.

Once I’m lost, Southern Rail fares up the sky

to the abstract city’s rose reverse.