The rigid way in which you recline in the shaded spots
of the acres, as if you were an apostle
exiled from the pew

and the rude stare you fix upon the curving outlines
of bulrushes smeared across the sacramental
flushing of the West

as though you were watching it from a tube-train window
whilst you wait to pull up to your stop
(undecided where to descend)

seems to altogether deny
the miscellany and transcendence
of your recessive life.

Earthbound, you engrave scalene triangles on funereal planks,
crouched like an egregious missile
in a conch-shell,

hearing everything in nothing and blockading the off-limits
stripes of the park in barbed wire; bitter
at the rumours of existentialism.

A time to learn about communism and varnishing tools has passed.
The air heaves its humidity and swans are discharged
from the cretaceous riverbank.

Your language is misinterpreted or else laughed off by the Marxists
proliferating on the cucumber grass, watching the clock;
the earl, the guardian.