Laocoön and the Bomb

LAOCOÖN AND THE BOMB

Thinking of the capsized harbor

and a few ships resting on their sides,

as these forgotten red bricks

in this forgotten city lot

arrange like sides of Paradise

(so a pattern plays with my fear),

I think an old helmet-ache

and a very quiet feather-plume,

and a man rises, moon-naked,

encircled by serpents, an ancient man

with stone hands to the stone bellies

of the snakes.-Look! he says,

my children are stone too!

FROM "THE FANTAST IN THE CITY"

BOOK TWO, 73

You take me at the full, a held flood

of pleading, all fleshed below

and held straining to a pole

as a flag in a wind, mouth a-gawp

for having been caught. A cry

is in my throat, pulled down again

and again to make it hot. And yet

I know clouds in my head and hands

from far away as icy as the moon,

a landscape of fire, ice and solitude.