in glimpses in small hours of the marsh mallow

living there like that with no head

and everyone looking through the trees

you'd have to ask

you'd want to know

if the flame that walks alongside

had the appearance of a marsh fire

a Saint Elmo thing that plays at night

around his main and mizzen

or super-mizzen as of a yawl or caterwaul

imagine that, squat there in the rising fog

and silence as little balls of light

that appeared over the slough at just before midnight

hung there a while then vanished

dead cells he thought dead cells that ignited

with inner mystic rotational fire something anyway

of lower orders not godly or angelic merely fire

catalysed up from some disaster of the personal tissue

some dream thing some downthrowing of the state

in metaphor or cataphor as of a marsh wight

or marsh mallow as is now seldom seen

a willow or wisp that strikes upon one's eyes

then vanishes wholly away in sight-echoes

whereupon he squats harder, more brooding

in the consciousness of those unreeling years

only again, only

.