Confidence

For Brodsky, plying "Constancy"

Confidence crises conform to a provable type:
geometry, as when the stomach sees its reflection in tripe --
the ends justified, edible, when the means are mean,
as Clausowitz practiced, for what is land but a weaning
from what you have got to what you can get.
Complexity's shadow makes groundhog of awareness,
sending the singular multitude searching deep under bare
earth for the blind solution to that which it would rather 
not see -- length eludes the snake's preferences, as deference
saddens bacterial bowels who would rather not give up 
any more ghost than has already leaked from their cup.
Decisions breach clouds as vultures, whose admirers see
eagles and wish that it was murder, not death, haunting this carrion tea
house, follow through on the sixth promise, the sense 
that decay is less dense
than an eggshell the minute
that a buzzard goes from recycler to parent.