like someone knocking at the temple—arriving
within each soul growing old
begging, impatient
for these nights to end, wanting
never darkness—
its murmurous mirror:
*
its drained tongue
as dead driftwood soaking the vein
as these words float up
out of body
in a joke sharpened in or sharpening
each myopic minute
met
and now dirtied up, or far too beautiful
for this
and now desperate for
the never would or could
or at least had not meant to mean). Pity the stirred.
So stormed out, as in exhausted, my eardrums left watching.
Each nerve, in the mood exhumed,
hissing, go away,
go away, night sky, did we come this far together?
I am cold. And in this next breath,
the same waking,
the same hauling of debris. I am
here in the skin of … otherwise) shoveling out, dryly
The End of the Alphabet Page 4
