slurs in my room.
My desire is as sharp as whiskey
or a hurt nerve, from my head
to my hand: to populate
the void, to turn this blankness
into a field of stars where I can sleep
forever in my earned sleep,comforted by the wind off
Atlantic
Avenue, and the waters at its end.
Lights rise from the water, a City
across the way, that I raise
in my empty room to starlight.
Daryl
Hine
THE FIRST SNOWFLAKE
that signals
The beginning of the Winter
Glistens on the window
Like some early symptom
Of a fatal illness.
Soon the scene is filled with
Whirling white corpuscles
As suicide battalions
Fallon one another
Building with their bodies
Permafrost foundations
For the icy city
Till the garden's sculptured
Frieze is under wraps.
Blanketed but bare the
Trees assume ungainly
