Exercised, her languid beauty
assumes an undeserved merit.
Alien graces denting Alameda
with a shepherd’s eyes.
Trolleys and bomberos
afford her excitement,
diaphragm rationed with gibbets
and tourneys, the imperialist
journeys of half-mad women.
Sound, doleful earth, and cover
all the uncovered who betray
without malice the rude and solid
achievements of the good.
Howl, dogs, disarm the cats,
spectral with fasces of a feline design.
They will abort you, puppy,
cleansing the world to an image
of Baghdad at dawn, the dockyards
of London a paradise of cats.
The imperialism of a beauty with claws,
who stares but will not answer,
though the Pope himself call
–kitty-kitty-kitty.