Stillborn

The road to the summit is faint. But you can see it. Like something black, near black.

A silhouette loves the rain, and is loved by it. Neither is merciful. I witnessed this in London and further up the Thames.

A wall, a bridge, a night, a city. The intersection of cries, smells and their evacuation. The neat forms of senselessness.

They moved into a highrise, beyond the meadows, hills and fires. It was the most Ethiopian paradise yet.

When we push open the double-glass doors, we get the morning in Pompeii. Tar everywhere and a few feathers.

As an adult, I stand up in a great noisebath, straining for the truth. As a child, a second crayon was enough.

Meandering in a city of squares, transfixing the old river, distancing the shoplights. I love, and lose all bearing in the world.

Once upon a time, at a blind corner, two blind fish. It was raw and sweet. Two fish. And the blind hereafter.

He climbed out of bed and shuttered the moon. But a car passed the window again and again. He read, the dreamless man.

The neighborhood was held together by noises, and by colors touching and resembling one another. Morning before you knew it.

Trip

They drive by night and reach the city. It’s still sunless, not-yet.

At a corner, lost, unkempt: a pair in their time.

The tail-ends of words are broken. A cab with darkened glass. A second.

To the theatre district, world-famous, a mile away. The night overwritten by arm’s-length letters.

This one’s famished. That one’s stuffed. Shadowy tables, and strangers in a line.

They happen to feel—not during the photograph, not in it, but outside afterward—the grief.

(She) How green was my valley? (He) How black is my hair? Buttoning up.

Tacit the sex, the dayblind pining for it, for the mooncrowned moonbit scape of it, their second home.

Trapped in the shops, held by the gilt-edged street, they will yet make it to the light, and the light after that.

Some Movement

A wind slipped through the trees, made light of their muteness. A hand restored it.

The door is always furnished, a bed inside and darkness outside. The leagues between them, the late hesitations.

Ladybug on the knee, on the arm twisting in the sun, in the place of departure.

Night, gravel-stir. The heads in a window, their torsos side by side, making sounds.

Into the sea falls sloe-black. Into the pond goes snow-white. Into the waters no one can sleep.

They all took benches, reading, watching the see-saw, crossing their legs. It was a park, and twilight. Nearly time.

A parade circles back, and trains return,—but a man runs away, scurrying, as if the horizon owned him.

The Location

People stared: a body was interrupting the road. Just dead, out of place, waiting on a name.

In a row of storefronts, in a string of lights, the one that saves is seldom found.

Roman heads, the heads of girls, at a windowpane.       Cameos.       Pangs memorized by the hand.

Around eight that evening, the house still warm to the touch, a cry flew out.

Face-up in the garden. Mouth open but obscured by trees. North of the corner used as a bus turn.