for Donald B. Elder

These images will parade until the morning
When every symptom is a sign of health.
Man in repose is armed to kill, his sign
The bomber diving down the iron funnel—
Until he is free and the screaming of the boy
Becomes no more than a knitting of the brows.

But now they parade in the city and the cloud.
Or, Don, your gallery, where all images
Pass as a line of targets and the bells
Ring for perfection and the birds go down,
with one dark figure always aiming where
Any right-minded fool sees only air.

If anyone call it supernatural,
Say that all shapes seduce: this space is real,
Say that his trigger-finger can contrive
The Middle West be Spain, the hostile child
At last be reconciled; until this death
Through skill dissolve in the body with all myth.

Monsters of understanding will deny
The body holds all images, but myth
Is in this shape, shape of a target space
That can be filled by the flicker of a face
Until the parade dissolve to peace, the eye
Of the sacred hunter assume his own identity.