Nothing Is Enough. Even
the Sky Is Unclear.

Can right words make the difference and, if so, what
shall we say? The day gives way to electric night,
the pastoral dies beside the human grove,
and I say, What have you done to me, dark, where
shall we go?
Darkness doesn't know, no answer
will suffice, outside my head, faces in the night,
make their terrors of half-right. I am dying

outside the light, leaves lift me much, and we go
along the mulling air—we dare to take too much,
so when the train huffs off, we feel the transport
of stares, we repeat our sullen coughs and drag
our burdens down the double track, to that place
where we saw lights and through an open door a
face that held darkness off, and in stars saw white.

White, the root of other, the hidden under,
might—might make the darkness lighter, might
make bright brighter this flight through angular streets.
There is no narrative it seems, only a
pulling past, and figures, silent crouched, there for
a time, to bear witness to what will pass, our
hour on this only earth we ever need.