Mastodons wash slowly ashore,
atomized in miners' gold-gravel
They arrive with no pretension to truth
alive in the visible form of disappearance
city-bound inside metal vectors
Annihilated by longitude and latitude
natural surroundings surrounded
surging forth, the mastodon confronts d**h again
in the grotesque picturesque of the lens
in the screaming reappearance of the screened
The state of the world in our absence
preserved for our presence, is a décor
dictated by decree and demanding irony --
like the fly, with its faceted eye and
broken line of flight