After reading the October 2013 issue of Poetry.

What vanity is this? Asks the enfant terrible
His latest work selling in the triple digits

I’m not so different from the butcher’s boy
Bloody apron askew, half-smile on his face
Or the preacher’s grace in desperate ascension
The ladder fixed firmly on the gutter’s curb

So hard to tell the weeping from the laughter
At such an angle; let’s call it even
Mr. Joyce, in his second coming, inventifacted words a-flail
Would smile at such sanity, clean as a whistler’s boy

Sheep or swine, it’s all alike; I see it now for no reason
Not so much the parting of the fog as the clarity of it
Curse the winter if you like; it won’t leave
The Stars by which we swear such oaths

But fizzle in the end of all creation
A-twitch with whimsical eternity