Daniel, Isaiah, Habakkuk

Daniel, Isaiah, Habakkuk

I
No longer keep me incantation,
flesh my seamless electron
antenna to all human screens.

Earth behind on math elevators,

light in my space ray, a steam on glass;
daily love soon forgot at the mechanic level;
paper money held till I squeezed the ink,

cities raised and once believed.


II
Now I sin daily against science. Saint's robes
shortened into smocks, still professing what
none has seen, and only certain learned, confirm;

stubble kingdoms less than all I can believe.

I keep for misbelief hierarchies of fabled death:
my dominion fixed to both spaces, I pass straight
through the machine, beyond the factories of heat,

past the cutthroats fresh from their cribs.


III
There are no houses now where I used to live,
work desks and women turned back each
into the flat folds of rubric sided walls,

spacescape thin as paper, spun around a hair.

Dig my bone at Jerico. I know I am a code
in your eye, made a measure in your brain,
and my number will still come up one wish;

still perfect, round, and just.