The swallow of summer, she toils all the summer, A blue-dark knot of glittering voltage, A whiplash swimmer, a fish of the air.       But the serpent of cars that crawls through the dust       In shimmering exhaust       Searching to slake       Its fever in ocean       Will play and be idle or else it will bust. The swallow of summer, the barbed harpoon, She flings from the furnace, a rainbow of purples, Dips her glow in the pond and is perfect.       But the serpent of cars that collapsed on the beach       Disgorges its organs       A scamper of colours       Which roll like tomatoes       Nude as tomatoes       With sand in their creases       To cringe in the sparkle of rollers and screech. The swallow of summer, the seamstress of summer, She scissors the blue into shapes and she sews it, She draws a long thread and she knots it at the corners.       But the holiday people       Are laid out like wounded       Flat as in ovens       Roasting and basting       With faces of torment as space burns them blue       Their heads are transistors       Their teeth grit on sand grains       Their lost kids are squalling       While man-eating flies       Jab electric shock needles but what can they do? They can climb in their cars with raw bodies, raw faces       And start up the serpent       And headache it homeward       A car full of squabbles       And sobbing and stickiness       With sand in their crannies       Inhaling petroleum       That pours from the foxgloves       While the evening swallow The swallow of summer, cartwheeling through crimson, Touches the honey-slow river and turning Returns to the hand stretched from under the eaves – A boomerang of rejoicing shadow.