ISSUE: Autumn 1977
Hand over hand and over the backs
of some humans it comes,
as it does now, from the south, south-
east. It comes, beginning nowhere,
and hauling all the expelled
breaths of millions from nowhere,
a foot or a thousand feet above
the oceans, carrying and not
caring. It comes—an enormous zero
that encircles whatever objects
it whirls around. It’s this wind
that touches me here and maybe
again some endless miles north,
or west, or . . . . In the back
of my eye it’s always there
dividing whatever leaf from whatever
tree—dull, unrelenting, dumb.
And also its sour taste rattling
across my tongue. . . . O immortal
and awful marriage between velvet
between velvet pliers and a velvet
noose: the wind, the enemy.
