Mandelstam Variables

I

Where are you and what are the chances
of a visitation, to lift this godforsaken
brutish day: a gold blow-in clump,
a gust-cut cloud of seed clocks
caught in the crab apple’s fingertips?

Rarely seen alone, a goldfinch wonder-cluster
glows at midnight in the city’s perma-light.
What’s the weather like in your eyes?

Behind your forehead you hold no
wheel of colours, but millennia of harmonics,
a hard-won hard-wired catalogue
of tunes so tough to sing that you
would sooner parrot songs of any neighbour.

Come back to us, we miss you!
Your blood-dipped face, inverse pearl eyes.
I’ll wait the night and watch, petition you,

and look, the sourpuss tree in April
...