This Battered Night

Tired body changes
before dawn from animal to woman;
body's skin slips on again,
pulled from reluctant corners,
resistant and harbouring, along with the hide,
seven consecutive stages of sleep.
Skin slips on again,
fits like a second layer of,
still loose, raw in patches,
not yet attached to body.
Skin slips on again.

This battered night and tortuous waking,
to seven stars still low
on the horizon, wet with fog,
and you are missing.

Offer me this morning
as if it were yours to give, this rising
sun as if held in your hands, enormous orange
in a country sick with solitude.
Give this day to me in spite.
In spite of differences, we rise
under the same sun.

All my suns are on the street.

Following the Wake

(Written in the early morning, February 15)

How long
since I have seen this light?
White light, mingled only
with the blue of latent evening,
early morning,
daylight shifts receding
into twilight. Slips th'abysmal
thread of lucid admiration
onto fingers white with plying
river waters. Under chariots,
under bridges run the tendrils,
gellid fingers, run the marvels
of a winter early dying,
of a February morning,
of returning, of the past.

Of the past, and of the passing,
as the snow is briefly falling
over aquaduct and thicket,
spent the summer briefly waking,
spent the autumn bearing berries,
spent the winter spent, and making
up for time lost in the turning
of a tertiary season.
'Tis the season.

Winter, call me.