"Afor we are overtaken"
--Crane
She's sleeping. I should be there. What could hold
me to these
moonless shadows, lacking clouds
or even constellations above snow?
Do they exact day-labor, even now?
Or is there something in me which resumes
always, in darkness? And if
I refused
what difference to Hurleigh? All the rites
she once resumed are lost. The sacrifice
of blood and antlers meaningless to me--
and centuries between her
love and mine,
serpent or torc or cigarettes, these words
or all sounds I cannot find within
or outside, on those scattered drifts, and yet
within those shadows at the clearing's edge...
in sleeplessness, her mysteries, our blood
in constellations we have seen the same
spare message of warm arms and
voyagings
in cycles of unsleeping, soundless words.
