I.
On earth, paper was wasted; on earth, paper
was precious and who wrote as small
as he deserved? Engravers, never, and never
the hair’s breadth, thickness of coins,
grain of rice men. Here I have no words

to say how he is all a story, so say the spine
is tipped out and replaced each time I tell him:
a week is nothing like the desert, where days

and days spin out, where his edges and eyes
alloy with gold, and who will tell him he walks
on sand, not a soft slipping breast of canary,
atomized as never he made one? Who

will tell squint him? Now he races through,
now he digests him, now he slams and does
not see the gilt rise off in swarms; now he is

horizontal, and lets the bleaching light empty
goldbeating from the bronzing arms, and scatter
gold-of-pleasure in the beaten rows of back;
now he is calm at last, all the lions led out
of him, all the honey-wearing heads led out
of him; and lies there, horrible, bell-rope
for hair. The face handled smooth as on
a coin, as mottoless, as murdered king.
Materialized. As pulled from air.