To a Cheap Replica of the Head of Michelangelo’s David

Into the birdbath’s frozen mirror,

you stare down a nose of red clay

as if—past mossy five o’clock-shadow,

your curls under snow—

you can’t see

someone just carved from marble,

and stupid with it:

that youth who stood,

sling in one hand, stone in the other,

at the end of a story he’d wandered into.

All you rule is a patch of backyard,

the rest of England erased by snow.

Dead stalks of summer rattle the dead of winter,

their names forgotten.

From the ice,

thrush and robin chip their separate psalms.

He who sits in the heavens

sings of sex and food, snail and worm.