A hunch recruits its precedents.  And breezes
ply among the clippings from the tree-lawns,
moving the lot about, keeping a season relevant,
about as convenient as police, and sweeping,
as tall winds sweep, and the taller winds, ranging
in high branches, among the disrupted galaxies. 
And he, sentence by sentence listening, revisits
the violet-leaved accounts, igniting privacies,
imagining a figure like himself, splendid and replete,
alive and someplace later in the century, minding
what served him once as foodstuffs and amours, in
volumes, or as musings at the heaps, pursuing
himself, let's say, placed so by photographs, among
a foreground company, where elements cry out,
and the lens convicts all kinds of local tidiness, as
people stop for breath, beneath this skyline
brushed by winds, before this business shocked by
end of year excesses, but seeming to stand again,
even as numbers stand on end, and hearts as much
as talents hired out, taking themselves for beers,
to share their faiths in country diets, and old enough,
he thinks, to piss or hibernate.  1996.  Then
1996 again, brushed by the winds and milder forms
of coveting, the shop-fronts done up to compete,
nothing but one man kneeling, discovering the notes
on slalom and on local marinades, and nothing
but one man kneeling before a burned remembrancer,
but one's gummed sticks, poking at the surd,
bringing a phrase or so to light, into the air around
this nearly-thinking medium, where orchestras
strike up, playing their takes on incandescent wines
and postal codes, as dozens or so, among the beers
by pitchersful, consent to serve the further pleasures
of his project, and then the silence following,
pretending not to ask, where silence is heard
to beg, and beg again and question.