Appetite (17)

Meaning the features change, and the urge
for naming stresses.

And this company of haunts, emboldened now
by plates and entertainments,

blinking dust or gathering open sentences
to centers, insists itself,

for all these "Hallowells," feeling the cleansing rain
and tail-ends of their sensations, meaning

the stragglers have changed, their confederate scope
and useful advocacy, and all these

"Hallowells," their practical or playful french,
the tossed greens and escargots,

appealing to them, the ways despair, when fresh,
the metaphysical, when fresh, will seem

to be  invention, a stair maybe, star-crystal stairs
to esplanades, or now these shattered stairs,

this ice brought down in perilous blades
across their shoulders, delivering

the likes of these from baths, the hearts of these
from baths with their deep-studied

send-me-offs.

 

© Robert Lietz