<3Harriet>3
Half a year, then a year and a half then
ten and a half--the pathos of a child's fractions, turn-
ing up each summer. God a seaslug, God a queen
with forty servants, God ... she gave up--things whirl
in the chainsaw bite of whatever squares
the universe by name and number. For
the hundredth time, I slice through fog, and round
the village with my headlights on the ground,
as if I were the first philosopher,
as if I were trying to pick up a car
key ... It can't be here, and so it must be there
behind the next crook in the road or growth
of fog--there blinded by our feeble beams,
a face, clock-white, still friendly to the earth.
A repeating fly, blueblack, thumbthick--so gross,
it seems apocalyptic in our house--
whams back and forth across the nursery bed
manned by a madhouse of stuffed animals,
not one a fighter. It is like a plane
gunning potato bugs or Arabs on the screen--
one of the mighty ... one of the helpless. It
bumbles and bumps its brow on this and that,
making a . . .
