And were you to follow the fragile architectures
blackened by time and soot,
the courtyards at whose center stands
the deepest well; were you to follow
the shrouded flight of the nocturnal
birds and, at the bottom of the ravine the flickering light
of the galaxy, the swaddling bands of every anguish .
But the footstep that echoes so long in the darkness
is that of the solitary walker who sees nothing
but this falling of arches, shadows, folds.
The stars are much too subtly woven,
the belltower's eye is stopped at two,
even the climbing creepers are a mounting
of shadows, their fragrance a bitterness that hurts.
Come back, north wind, come colder tomorrow,
break the sandstone's ancient hands,
scatter the books of hours in the attic,
and let all be a quiet lens, dominion, a prison cell
of sense that doesn't despair! Come back stronger,
wind from the north, winds that make us love
our chains and seal the spores of the possible!
Too narrow the alleys, the file of black asses
whose clattering heels strike sparks;
from the unseen peak magnesium flashes reply.
Oh the trickling that cautiously drips down
from the dark huts, time turned to water,
the long colloquy with the wretched dead, ashes, wind,
wind that holds back, death, the death that lives!
This Christian wrangle which has nothing
but words of shadow and sorrow-
what of me does it bring to you? Less
than the marsh, softly silting
behind its dam of cement, has stolen from you.
A mill-wheel, the trunk of a tree,
the world's last frontiers. A tangled pile
