I lost sensibility and communion in pursuit of plot and character for the ricochet of horror and death, for the mockery of crime and subterfuge.
At times, I was in sleep a king—but on waking, no such man.
I have been awake to my losses a long while: there was no recouping them in France and Italy, alone with hegemony of rocks, promontories, beaches, hierarchy of seas assailing nakedness...here in Stratford, here I have illness as exchange.
Sallow yellow:
Men, women and children dying in the streets:
Church bells tolling.
Three men drag a dead youth to the Avon River,
pitch him in.
Church steeple, reflected in the water, sways:
The church registry lists column after column of dead: