Between the fullness of dreams,
flying apple-trees and sprouting birds,
horses charging through
the descending leaf of beaten gold
and lonely Ishtar blooming blue
on the brow of a bullock lyre-horned,

between this and the other fullness
of waking dreams,
a house and garden, a pond behind,
everything precisely calculated
and fatally verified,
where the sun pours out
his liquid laughter
on ashes and dust –

between these lives,
two cups of an hourglass,
as I fall through its throat,
there is one moment

when I remember
what I am:
a moaning puzzle pressed
by the rush of sand,

a momentary stem
with a boundless phantom flower
on either end.