"It's raining in my skull,"
says the woman who creases

matter-of-factly into sunned chop
of stone beside me on a city corner;

her eyes topple and drop into
her sullied mauvish oval bag

which spills crowds of rag and bone
into her floral fields of lap.

Then: a sudden psithurism
fences us in elm tilt, we sag

into the listen; what strange words
these foredoomed leaf-curls brush

into prose, sericeous speech
that smuggles death lessons

through the ring of afternoon.
It shakes us both: a mouthful

of extermination addressed
to us in the language of night places.

An empire of silence is reinstated
for a lonely tyrant minute until

the bus arrives; she gathers
her handfuls of sparks and solemns,

steps up into the air, and is gone.
Alone, I rescind every mercy I was ever given.