This Day

DANIEL HOFFMAN

DANIEL HOFFMAN

THIS DAY

Under what stone

Have you curled your snail's-horn while my blood

Ebbs down

To dead level

And feet crunch empty shells?

Dullard imagination, hiding

Your ecstasies from me,

Your curious tongue

Silenced,

Dry,

-T'll get by

In the light of this

Evacuated day,

TU pick flat stones to scale

On the dead

Flatness of the sea

Until the one that hides you looses

Rings in rings

Spreading wider, nearer,

Long wet tongues to lick and lick

The silence of the shore.

That will awaken you.

This day

Shall yet be vivid in the ballads

You will arise to improvise,

Those auguries as irreversible

As the waves that set you free.