Classic Poem

After Max Ernst's 'Europe after the Rain'

In the dark
each sits alone
clutching his flag

I have more than my one death
to attend to
there is a sickness about
and the magician has vanished

But I sit with my twenty six years
spread on my palms
and I wait for the silence
when the programme is interrupted
and the speakers have no script.
And I think how to carry my children
into the sewers.

Roll up the cities.
Let the window explode
in a million glass flowers.
In the darkness already
the woman picking milk from the step
the ashes raked last thing at night
are postures, buried
slipping into dust, rock, ooze,
furniture of a planet
wheeling in silence
lonely as a train
waving its little handkerchiefs of steam