My mind is worst when
[waxed and buffed
like a black marble lobby]
it gives no purchase to feet or rede.
I’d liefer leave and slide across
its sable-shine rind and reck
after the janitor’s jangle-bone key ring to
Sub-basement b with the concrete call
[sepulchral, into distant directions]
of ru
[m]
ination
swoll into its thews.
He and I
[his harrier]
welcome
the lines we pass in dust. They are as
arcane words mined into our service.
[A clean floor can kill such men as we.]
It forgets those it has been trod upon.
It has no ruth to purpose.
Just so,
my unfilled mind
[in thrall]
speaks of dirt as a musing
and unrevised withal,
[strewn into trash bins]
they both
[should not]
become rubbish.