The stacks are bound
with crenellated piths
bredes and orchidlike
struts mapped to high
places that are virtual
complex scales or just
the only way to get anywhere
toward darkness made
of layers inchingly
proportional to
sound and disturbance
where gray breakers mold away
from their boundary blocks—
sleep, or the intrigues of
sleep in stepped-
off funneling flocks of
birds when you look down
like shoals glancing over
the vast reef subducting its traps—
to be close to
removed from
at once all unseen
touched-in
repentances how
are you anything
alive to such work
from The Great Medieval Yellows Find more by Emily Wilson at the library
Copyright © 2015 Emily Wilson
Used with the permission of Canarium Books.