Brittle, an insect's churring
sounds fraught with the years
of an old man's waiting,
ready to break and scatter.

And mosttimes are longtimes
when bleeding is chronic.
Redness, in its epidemic way,
spreads a filthy message:

how nocturnal pining hedges
the line of an old sky's lip;
how scent of grasses greening
stains his lungs with malice.

And water. Whatever its form, it burns.
He is so dark with vice he cannot stand.

There is nothing these days that he can stand.

So that the movement of wind
through a bay laurel's leaves
is a widower's wailing
through autumn's slanting light.

So that in the morning, waking,
the sun's hard pouring is a mockery.
Its rude light conveys a burden,
the means by which he senses your absence,

a room which lacks the fatality of you:
your dark mouth, your pagan sighs.

These days, consciousness itself eats like poison.