Shore Counter

    Friendless， with an intimation of islands，

    The merchant set up shop on shore.

    He had no jovial¹ manner and made no eye

    Contact with customers but gazed——

    They might be birds or nations——at white

    Forms out there in the offing.  People preferred

    Buying from him to pretending to be hearty²

    And earthy——what you have to do with some shopkeepers.

    He was the lower-middle class transfinite——

    Handing you something to eat and taking the cash

    With indifference³ like the unpainted eyes

    Of the oldest classical sculptures of their own erosion，

    The self （imagine this） no longer tainted⁴，

    The blue long gone because of weather.