You sleep with overflowing flowers In mid fall The stairs pull breath In hard inhalations From the rise beneath your feet There is a shadow, serious, oblique With the weight Of immeasurably tall buildings Suspended by the petard height Of afternoon, as if gravity were a sundial Marks long since effaced Edging gutters and The wire haunted enfilades Of birds escaping ledgers Til no-one knows what time It tells New stars about the face of evening Still, with each careful step The darkness moves In slow distress Around you
