Robert Verdon, #67, the sunlight then

all the world is

*

a brilliant contour of solid lava

the smell of fresh paint in the morning

before anyone has lit a cigarette, or

a bright cigar, or a gas stove

*

dregs of whiskey tossed out

warm sherry poured in

this is 1930, we have the air

of waiting between curved walls

*

I speak as a yearning ghost in a trilby

or a corpse without a tie beneath a stone

I cannot think, but I still remember the ladies

and the gas-masks, and the rolling eternities

*

and the sunlight, then