nocturnes
1
So long since I forgot them-- but tonight
in shallow hours, just before the morning light
is kindled at the dead-end street,
when all who wake are cold and lonely;
Who dream, make not a sound, but only
perhaps, a heart's unrestful beat.....
I saw them vanish-- once-warm friends I slowly lost
the campfires long forsaken, caked in frost--
Around a corner, in a shade, fade my bereft....
The streets were empty, as if everyone
had simply all packed up, and simply left
a dead and hollow world to me alone.
2
Maybe this is dying: on the thinnest night, you step out,
then a door slams. Standing on the porch--
behind you, in heated, glowing rooms, you would hear
the muffled conversation, the sound of laughter
and beer gurgling from a bottle.
Maybe this is dying: to not hear a dog's bark
or even the sifting of leaves,
and watching the rooms filled with light
as if it were the hub of all humanity,
and watching life from-- the other side...
3
There is a stretch of dark slopes
with sensuous curves, in whose lap the road
runs zigzag. I love to drive there at midnight--
the hilltops are crowned with the lit windows
of a ghostly row of houses that touch the stars
and converge on a stretch of streetlights far below.
From here, I can see beyond the city, across the bay.
My car slides, noiseless, down the hill,
my foot off the gas, my mouth hanging open
in a kind of wordless, even thoughtless prayer to night--
estranged, as if on another planet
--a cold and airless star with wide, smooth, empty streets.
Hollowness surrounds me, is inside me;
leaning on my arm, the outlines of a human form,
unfilled and unwarm-- and I am hungry, but not for food;
and I am thirsty, but I want to be drunk...
Falling through dark, through thin air, without a will,
without a purpose or god or thought in my head,
I am night, I am silence, I move forward,
no longer able to be, only to become..
4
After rain, the road ran black and bright,
reflecting in a haze the streetlamps
streaking by us, two by two across our faces.
The windows were up; the stillness was thick,
impenetrable as ice, and we sat up,
clear and silent, only praying
that neither now will speak....
(
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