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To be dislodged in minute
hard scatterings alien
to my hot intents, I found
was the principle, and brute
the miscellaneous man
dwindling down the road to town.
outside the house, under moonlight
Surviving their own depths and bounds
The rooftops of the neighborhood
Seem to have suddenly drawn near --
Over the blanched and molten grounds
Where boulders and old peach trees stood
The shapes look papery. Up the air
The moon, clean cinder of a blast
Whose glare is neither day nor night,
Has entered, violent and still,
Driving the substance from a past --
My carnal mind goes like a bright
haze on chill surfaces. A chill
Sleep can acknowledge best the might
That set loose these dead essences
Of what by day came steadily on
Then hunched in evening's slackened light --
Sleep (till we enter, like old trees,
The fresh restrictedness of dawn).