Container camps glitter, lavish lamps, ports, tires, piers,
splitting machines – for he is like a refiner’s fire –
boiling chemical plants, petroleum palace, trucks, docks,
cranes angle for crates, bulbs blink, the chalice brims with sluice,
sludge drums wait, inviting percussion, vats, levees, molasses,
tar rivers hang with pearls and bridges, hangars squat,
the gates of limbo open to a glimpse of the precursor paradise,
white and red strung highways flow and parse, snaking by-lanes,
intermittent cars, deep marshes, cesspools, bubbles slow and fray
at Terrebonne Bay.