The world out there sometimes seems

   A vast colony of limbless leprous

   Scavengers, incanters of reckless

   Liturgies, elephants blinded by

   An endless quest for meaning.

   I cannot give them alms in any coin

   They might spend among themselves:

   My work is the dreaming of words

   To melodies heard in vaulted silences

   Where images and echoes never die;

   A ritual sacrifice of sensibility

   To flow and eddy; the sound of

   A syllabary forged in the liver

   Of some god more favored than clawed

   By eagles.