-Portrait of A Well-Digger’s Ass By Francis Bacon-

Here it begins

though no sky

that dark inside

the mounds of earth

piled higher beside.                                                                                                         

The point is in sinking

like the world itself drinking

him up though he knows—

the deeper he gets

the closer he goes—

excavation the goal.

Yet still, the weather.

As though that’s all he were.

So hard to recall when the descent began—

that initial hole.

It seems like forever

the digging that spading

all downwardly wading

his mind like a splatter

contained in a whole

with the walls, earthly matter

bleeding freely and cold.