phosphorus fetish

Some HPB history.

Even before the robot eyes kept track
of our ev'ry move (to make us tempted better),
the forces of this earth were echoing clatter
small & large, each station of the trek.
No one can say they never changed the course
of thousand thousand mild trajectories
nor find, ahead, as many secret doors.
But how may a poet, in this thought, clasp peace?
I walk into the cold & dark garage
& speak to the rafters there, the concrete stained
from years; these things that now, haphazard-donned,
surround, are not the meanings of the age;
i drift on shadow-sails, through seas of bilge.