My beast, my age, who will try
 to look you in the eye,
 and weld the vertebrae
 of century to century,
 with blood? Creating blood
 pours out of mortal things:
 only the parasitic shudder,
 when the new world sings. 

 As long as it still has life,
 the creature lifts its bone,
 and, along the secret line
 of the spine, waves foam. 
 Once more life?s crown,
 like a lamb, is sacrificed,
 cartilage under the knife -
 the age of the new-born.
 
 To free life from jail,
 and begin a new absolute,
 the mass of knotted days
 must be linked by means of a flute.
 With human anguish
 the age rocks the wave?s mass,
 and the golden measure?s hissed
 by a viper in the grass.

 And new buds will swell, intact,
 the green shoots engage,
 but your spine is cracked
 my beautiful, pitiful, age.
 And grimacing dumbly, you writhe,
 look back, feebly, with cruel jaws, 
a creature, once supple and lithe,
 at the tracks left by your paws.