[etude homage, Religio Medici]
How we outlive our notions of ourselves
and never know the others in there all along
give them away, become them
only at a stretch imagine
and the stretch is good
the old deep topaz Madeira glow
the pole of the day slowly turns on in its stared down into depths
taste the nigh noon pass!
the tongue decides
better than hands the layers of the day
for the other, I use it but like my Globe
and turne it round sometimes for my recreation
. . . yet to begin the Alphabet of man
by Kenneth Irby
from The Intent On: Collected Poems, 1962-2006 (North Atlantic Books, 2009)