From Thomas Merton To Boris Pasternak

I.
For a long time I threw faces
to the world, waiting
for the stuccoed arrival of evening;
now I hear the ping ping ping
over in the camp of night
where they've been holding my breath.

II.
In the public square men with
wet cheeks build a machine
that runs on milk and it leaks milk
and someone's aurora borealis
struts down Alaska Avenue.

III.
These are difficult mathematics-
we're forced to solve with
our limbs and fingers.

IV.
I need a drink of acetylene,
wicked and laced with alpenglow,
to rid my nights of this restlessness,
to forever end metaphor and semaphore,
to just once say it out loud.