We go like a fog in an overgrown estate,
the rich relative gone,
the upper rooms darkened.

We go like a world
of lens grinder’s dust falling,
a world stumbling into the darkness of a ditch.

The slim catalogues we took over time
of our green world, the ripe fruit and the animals
darkened under a moral screen,
sobered under the prattle
of coins upon a table
(while on a mountain it continued to storm).

We go like a hired hand’s songs out the vast seam
of property and waiting,
crusoed by our vantage point in the dark
while the wind makes like a saviour
through other altitudes.

I speak friendly to all bloodstreams but I grow tired;
this isn’t the age of speaking
you say grief to a chickadee
and the only tears are rain.

[Italicized words are from ‘Breaking’ by Patrick Lane in Go Leaving Strange]