How parched, how marrow-dust dry
they must get on their long surface and undersea
journeys—huge stuffed husks,

You must remove your sleepmask, haul it
from your eyes, sleep a white sleep without
slapping floodwaters—let it go,

Somebody’s aunt out swabbing her birdbath
with Lysol and the town paper mill down the block
is beginning to blister in a clean shock

Thud, thud, all the sores go blind,
and over the basket of pears hover
brief addicted fruitflies.

We begin every night ignorant,
two xenophobes called in from exile,
pleased to the point of buoyant.

Bill Knott is a quintessential, almost primal lyric poet, primal in the sense that his poems seem to emerge from his bone marrow as well as from his heart and mind.