See the gentle curving
where the road narrows there?
Where the row of stone ends
the cliffside falls away.
See the gentle arching there?
Our world, too, disappears.
Take a moment to look
at the sloping ground near the trees.
Where the evergreens stand
the sky begins its fade to black.
The horizon slips.
The sun shines through the sea—barely there—then it goes.
There it goes.
I wanted to begin that way.
The night grows once it starts.
I wanted to begin,
with plainness.
The flat tones.
Then this: night.
It is a memory
of some nameless lost night
worth having.
The phone call tells you where you are and when, then goes.
And a lifetime sometime ends.
A pulsing blur remains with you the world over.
Give yourself that blurred night
and after passing through, you clear it.
You hear it, now sharp and ringing.
A memory has changed you.
Walking on that road now,
The curving cliffs restrain you.
Feel the cliffside rocks, their skin.
The day is moving and blank.
The rest of the world gone, alone
you tremble as you sit. Listen.
Hear the cars beneath the cliff—
Your friend is not there with them.
Hear the ocean’s distant breath—
The silent hollow tubes of his life now rested.
He’s running faster
forgetting he cannot run.
See the daylight coming in.
The dusty rooms sit blurred.
See yourself among things.
The worst despair plagues them.
Hear again the phone call.
Your dusty sunlight becomes plain expression.
Departures from our blank and heavy world persist.
Friends in earth and oceans
lie down in unmarked graves.
See distance rise between the living and the dead
between the cliffside and the sea
between discomfort and repose
between two people who begin
between the endless curves of roads
and in the darknesses of the night.