(for Robert Walser, Swiss poet, in his madness)

Than sky, the lemon, dredged, more dark this liquid.
Fluminal violet, in a lockjaw littoral, swings
Wind-swathed, wind-cradled

                                             Asunder the scooped rays
With fanged spire sentinels at last unbend
Over slender moles, where pedalos are harnessed.

Dazed, mad or dumb unscented gaze, but ladies
Emit, by twos and threes, conspicuous shadows
In a suave star-acre, hum in the voids they leave.

Sickle through throats of cloud the moon drops rustling
Down, as for a day forgotten. Configures heaven,
Curved luminous, in concord, over this brain’s trim bed.

Loll, where the rat stalks, the gowned fish and breed.

Air glabrous, may taste of acid, beast uncoil
Cocked like an abandoned eyebrow over
All ease, dark arbour, armoured there, his tail.

Time runs thick as thieves this iron way of water.

(Christopher Middleton, from Torse 3: Poems 1949–1961.)