Their sides a hushed gray,
streets run before enduring. And
tiled roofs clamber after the war,
whose great epoch bears
its own end: a child’s parcel of light.
Weight rises from the first person
no longer remote, whose name is
rippled from the coalfires,
sluiced into decline — —
the same light-covered
decline.
This one from the safehouse,
from shrill regions of glass. That one
scaled with lengths of skin, rope,
yellow linen and her father’s
blushed burnished suit:
An agreed silence,
a refusal. Well,
Those were shots of abandon.
And this — this
is considered evidence.
Sweet and Bitter Greens 