O Woolly City

O Woolly City, each thing dings dully as an acorn
And nothing that’s glittery-clad, no sting, is found: swan-necked
Flasks (for don’t we all crave beauty and contamination)
Aren’t, and faetted gold’s drammed with the gorgeous salts underground
Where love’s brooklike dagger shivers. Drat love’s daggery thirst.
And drat this woolliness: I promise you that there’ll be facts
But many other things are, City, necessary first
And a person’s in my pent house. A person or a spook
Who flits from opaque to Opaque. Away! And segue
In ultima; say our knees hurt and our elbows and backs;
Say it’s growth phrasing its formal demands; say our bodies
As they each stand now, are the volumes of how, in the past,
They gave one graceful reply after the next.... Lover’s love,
Till the last word unproofed is, say, pretext: a romance of
Manner. Say, Man or Ghost, more exactly: how difficult it is
To learn to speak our language fluently and correctly!

Copyright © 2007 Priscilla Sneff All rights reserved
from O Woolly City
Tupelo Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission