Where The World Quickly Ends

Where the world quickly ends there's a dock that groans.
Either from the weight of my body or from the water
Which is everywhere, like the wolves also everywhere.
Ducks make noises, too, like distant mortar shells
That shower the cattails. A horse trots into the fog
Curling gray and soft. Darkness hangs in the wings.

I'm only here now that I've stolen the wings
Of a vulture, what did you bring? The ground groans
And bulges, please! Speak quickly, before the fog
Bites its tongue and starts to bleed water.
Already the wetness has thinned the egg shells
Of the platypus. The rain retreats from nowhere.

What did you bring? Is it ivory? Up there
The skies are peeling from the madness of wings,
False as wallpaper plastered with ceramic shells.
The bison are frightened. Groundhogs just groan.
They chase their long shadows into the water,
Untraceable against the wall of fog,

Which is the same smooth wall of fog
That's been roaming through the folds of nowhere.
Only the whales know nothing. They break the water
Noiseless as the shuffle of an owl's wings.
The bored, orbiting satellite groans.
I snatched the scales off an armadillo's shell,

What did you bring? If you lick a sea-shell,
You can taste salt and mercury. Lick the fog
And taste death. The jaguar let out a groan
When I stripped its spots, I could be anywhere.
The dusk sails over with silent, tremulous wings,
And the clouds, finally emptied of water,

Have disappeared. In the cold mirror of the water
I see the moon encased in a starry shell.
The wolves went wild, hungry for the meat of wings,
And looking for a meal they surrounded the fog.
My scales and spots were no help, they were everywhere,
They found my vulture's wings. And now the dock groans

No more. No more, the gray Earth groaned,
And a sudden silence took everywhere.
The globe fit in the palm of the fog.