DARK ANGEL
Dark angel of the night, you come on folded wings
secret and silent, bringing sleep. To you belong
the rosemary and poppy, the final dream
from which the road turned in its lost beginning.
You have seen the frightened eyes of the city glow
upon bridges, along streets, behind roofed windows,
and you know how small a kilowatt burns in each
single, separate room, and how each one reaches
at last a diminishing point beyond which none
can see but you. Night is your hour and with it comes
the inevitable surrender, peaceful or
with clash of arms, with unfulfilled hopes, terrors,
the fingers still clutching at the vanishing day,
the throat strangled by the unuttered word it says,
the ear straining for the unheard response, the thought
immense in the dark. Only you, dark angel, born
of our love and pity, can see night's passing feet
around the earth, on rotating centuries
across the stars, journeying over the ruins
of forgotten time since we first left that home,
where the dream began, where the road turned, and the sun
swung in its orbit, bringing you, dark angel, down.