Translation is a mode.

Walter Benjamin says it. I say a
mode is another word for way.

A walk is on it, not just
along it, or a walk is underway.
All day long we attach
or avert. The long dull Sunday of a

north-going slope: if I write
I’ll die. If I don’t
I’ll die. Moving’s my only relief.
Walk this way: as an unstraddled horse with a
broad brown back like a table.

Which I wish I could just.
In the middle of the day. Stop and have something
explicit to say – .

Because of the paper-cut

grasses, the early
ish birds keep carefully
to the trees.

The day comes forward
like a color. The barge
a black hat
on a tight gray sheet.
Underneath,

The fish are
handkerchiefs.
The thread of their edges
is pink.

The day comes forward,
a forward-coming thing, but soft,
yonder, a small white body, a pillow in a case
on a clothesline pulley —

It’s the east and the day has strings.