Precipice

Blind cat, deaf cat, sunset
in the valley of dead industry.
A signal spire, high on the ridge,
offers guidance, a silhouette
against the sky. Black horse
on the slope crawls down,
white horse down the valley
stands still. All forces converge
above the ground, all tensions,
all resolutions, all desires
are like the four ginger legs
of the kitten at the snake hole
pulling on the tuft of catnip.
The very ground itself is slipping
through time's magnetic variance,
wondering what change is
in every instant to alter course,
to falter, to blunder off solidity
into a dervish axis. Every object
stands in this instant on the brink
of its slow coming future.
A small dietary twinge, and the heart
is weakened to the later failure.
A vaccination, a reaction, and a lifetime
of slow death to pulmonary wasting.
This road is the horse that ran.
This town (in the unmarked
fields) the horse that waited.
This cat, once blind, lives
all life in darkness. Unknowing
visits the unhearing. The flies
fall dead in the steel city
furnace heat, the tower testifies.