Above and below,
before and behind
the late summer
crickets’ delirium:
a void their layered
monochordial praise
pours and keeps
on pouring from—
*
what happens I wonder to all of the garbage
the New York barges disgorge in the ocean
to all the ten-thousand-year radiant poisons
boiling in hundreds of puny cooling pools
what happens when at last we accept there’s no
washing the whiff of apocalypse out of our clothes
*
Bill Knott is Victor Borge playing for laughs
while contemplating a page of Kierkegaard
he read before sinking into last night’s insomnia.
The thought of it casts a sickish light on his hands
as they prance over the ivories. He can’t resist
morphing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik into “Dixie,”
then “Dixie” into “Chopsticks,” making the crowd
break out in delighted applause without knowing why.