Lowell, Robert: The Death of the Sheriff 1.

Noli me tangere
 
We park and stare. A full sky of the stars
Wheels from the pumpkin setting of the moon
And sparks the windows of the yellow farm
Where the red-flannelled madmen look through bars
At windmills thrashing snowflakes by an arm of the Atlantic.
Soon the undertaker who collects antiques will let his motor idle at the door
And set his pine-box on the parlor floor.
Our homicidal sheriff howled for weeks
We kiss. The State had reasons: on the whole,
It acted out of "kindness" when it locked its servant in this place
And had him watched until an ordered darkness left his soul
A tabula rasa; when the Angel knocked
The sheriff laid his notched revolver on the table for the guest.
Night draws us closer in its bearskin wrap
And our loved sightless smother feels the tap
Of the blind stars descending to the west
To lay the Devil in the pit our hands are draining like a windmill.
Who'll atone for the unsearchable quicksilver heart?
Where spiders stare their eyes out
At their own spitting and knotted likeness
We must start: Our aunt, his mother, stands singing
O Rock of Ages, as the light wanderers show a man with a white cane
Who comes to take the coffin in his twain,
The thirsty Dipper on the arc of night.