Roused in fanfare, these facets
are full of scantiness,
of cold-***** futility, of bitter thanks

The light turns, morphs them
now they are faces, now limbs
now rancid rag houses again

Crooked sun gurgles, spits a fraud spring
and the office men observe their machines
straight-backed like chairs, they droop
rampant on scarped brown desks,
desks with picked-nail edges, so brown
no one sees them, so solid one forgets to

The sky runs her threads again
accumulating: stagnant noon, sitting
spread-legged, with wax-paper eyes
it watches, watches the aging

Slowly, everyone leaves
the formal men, their leisurely burlap work
lights blink as if to bulwark tears, and
the foul remnants of day's charred pleasure
begin to settle on skin.
the wrists thin, some nails cave in
some lichens on stone-nose

Things that elude cuddle elastic back
into the things they elude
and, spent, the sky breaks at last the thread
to another demure death:
glitchy and green, riddled
in its own secrecies,
dry-lipped as a crone

The light turns again
and this time, it is perfect:
just past the critical angle,
where bustle-bundles of beam
flee unfettered
and leave unlit the grateful subject
reticent, stale
bold in a boastless brood

only a singular fissure
of pretend slight
to mourn aloud in the spectacle of black