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to enjoy
 
if nothing can enter him even once
but if something dead in the air of everywhere
has stayed alive in him
his long-legged shadow won't leap snowbanks
or rub the heads of children
but he will weep uneven tears of unpoetic joy
not caring if they fall on concrete or grass
and watching you expressionlessly pass
 
it doesn't matter if you are reflected in windows
cluttered with cartoon advertisements;
if you have entered him he'll remember
your eyes better than any neon sign
 
if he doesn't consider her hips a symbol
or a magazine headline, apple bristling with razor blades
he will stay in her for longer than a day
her mouth a net full of angry ungrown fish
and he will come out smelling however a prophet smells
 
if he trips on a sidewalk of tilted slabs
and lands on your doorstep knocking the newspaper away
let him come in with a roar like an unphotographed lion
let him enter you and let you enter him
fingertips sore for they are stems
tired and pretty from dropping many fruits
your grass has grown over them and the seeds
are angry as mice within an iron house
the stars won't look like automatic handgun barrels to him
and his shadow won't have to trim the abstractions of the streets anymore--
he's entered her and her arms held gently back
by his hands to wait to touch him
by the roadsides where he left his ghost without thumbs
 
if nothing can enter him or enter her
they will be unfrightening as fanged wax
his eager years are rubbing the chests of dogs
and the crawling hands of giggling babies
along her greying track
if anything can enter him but he can't
throw the mugger or the rapist
through a wall of skyscraper glass
let his hands rest like empty winter stems
and her hands reject their need of fruit
silent they let them down under one leaf
to make love in graveyards where the stones
are made nameless by moss
to let love smell abrasive as any wind
and let the animals pass
god won't move his feet
let him look on them again without a breeze
as their faces borrow snakes and unseen cornstalks bend.

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