Purge
67 Purge Snow lawns, snow trees, streets of snow, And sky blue as a virgin birth, The air so cold Every breath has a clean edge, a clear Equation solved at zero— I run into the pure Pour of morning, where the sun Sharpens the light in ice swept up Like splinters from the crack of dawn, A fifty-year-old frowning private man, Out on the skids To pound away this poundage, put back The rooster pluck of youth, Gloves keeping out The gall of frost and the wind’s gnaw, Head packed in wool, but no Mad-slasher ski-mask on the face, No earphones breaking down The poise of silence with Clumsy lamentations on lost love Or the God-groveling bombast of Bach. I feel the freeze between The stoplight leaflets of autumn Dropping their hint— Repent! The end is near!— And the painted cups of crocus, first Seedy catalogues of spring. Out here, at twenty or below, On the soapstone sidewalks of the neighborhood, In footsweat and browdrench, each joint Whining like a tight hinge, 68 I leave behind all Kinks in the commonweal, stovepipe opinions, Victims of the car bomb and the whatnot shelf, And put this brain and bone to The next step, the body Schooled in movements that impede The unnatural ease of ice and innocence. ...
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