ALEXANDER

The caesar of the world cast his crown
into the heavens' flood,
thinking the fiery spaces watched his toy
and saw it drown.
But the seventh heaven would be God:
the perfect hour looks for infinity:
into a hope beyond their spheres
looked upward, stars.

There is an image in the death of trees:
men creep into their bone;
and the birds sing, because ambitions fail,
in their dead boughs.
Our living is a shell between
the crooked beggar and the nightingale;
and caesar into circling waves
cast eyes, not leaves.