these moonmad swans and ecstatic ganders
trapped egrets
charcoal owls
trotting turtle symbols
these pink fish among mountains
shrikes seeking to nest
whitebone drones
mating in air
among hallucinary moons
And a masked bird fishing
in a golden stream
and an ibis feeding
‘on its own breast’
and a stray Connemara Pooka
(life size)
And then those blown mute birds
bearing fish and paper messages
between two streams
which are the twin streams
of oblivion
wherein the imagination
turning upon itself
with white electric vision
refinds itself still mad
and unfed
among the Hebrides

A Coney Island of the Mind 11, Lawrence Ferlinghetti