Aubade

Black ice makes a pattern on the pavement
of negric circles reaching out to circles:
tatters of white frost hold them isolate.

As I come up over the rise an alien sphere
glides into view, startling the treetops:
an incongruous face

floating in the fresh untroubled blue;
an unshaven drunk on a dewy park bench,
bringing a reek of taverns into the day.

O, thou moon of misdemeanors,
outliving truth and trust,
why here, why now?

The real poets are all asleep,
and I only have escaped to see you
wandering along the West Hills

full of drunken song and imprecations,
ready to stumble into the river with Li Po,
oh! Drowning in your cleverness.

You will have set
by the time the real poets wake,
with their memories

of the chaste and solemn orb
that shot the shores of night with silver,
and glimmered and gleamed on the river.

And no one will ever believe me,
that I saw you shrieking here at dawn
with a musk of hops and malt around you.