--- T O N Y   B A R N S T O N E

Who knows what the world is?  I charged
my Nietzsche textbook at the bookstore,
hoping that some grandeur after the death of God
would flame out shining from the pages,
but I was shaken, crushed like foil, the shopboy
scowled at me, damn him and his nose ring,
the cumulonimbus clouds gathered greatness,
dark, like the ooze of oil, and I ran among crushed men
reckoning how far to my car as the fat drops
fell like rods, generating splashes as I trod,
and all the neons seared my eyes, trading words with me,
Vacancy, Tattoos, Hot Croissants, as through the bleared
smeared window of the French Bakery the female baker
toiled wearing a man's smudged shirt and shared
with this man the smells if not the flesh, if not the soil
or soul, no bare foot feel of being in the shoddy world,
no croissant for me.

Nature is somewhere, spent but there, and still,
one guesses, living, since that's what nature does,
living with the dear freshness of deep things,
but I lived then in Los Angeles, and, home,
looking out the window as the last lights
blackened to the West, I went traveling towards morning,
riding my soggy bed, until from the brown smoggy brink
of the world eastward came springing what
we have instead of the Holy Ghost, bent sunlight
over the world brooding, warm, comforting
as breasts, flying on one bright wing.