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The  man with black wings growing from his head
is the brother of death.
Poppies clot the entrance
to his lightless house.

In the grey kingdom, there is an elm
where the angels hang like gallows fruit,
to fatten, till they are cut down,
sent to whisper in the ears of men,


there is the sleep of bones in clay,
there are windblown seeds in gravel,
the ocean at night, a great and terrible animal
stricken with a wound,
a king in the hill,the devil in the oak

and myself, strapped into my machine,
dreaming of drowning, the morning crouched
pale and luminous as foxfire, as glowworms
in wet grass, as a city in the distance
where they do not speak this language
where they do not speak