July

The chapel with frescoes along one sun-warmed wall
gave onto a railway cut, its footpath
pushing afternoon into a far province,
a low jet fighter repealing its wrath like rolled tin -
I was forty-three and investigating my blindness,
advancing into what it had darkened me to see,
and so the pale devil herding mannequins
and the swirlers even paler over them, counter-herding,
...