What dream lies walled
within this night,
what shape shall crawl
up to the light
Drop by drop
as silence grows
inside its vault
of carbon snow
When glaciers halt
before no zones,
when both the poles
at last are one
Drop by drop
the dawn shall come,
a billion years
from cave to sun
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