NOCTURN

We are our long, ulterior attitudes, which seem

about the slant of half past five in ailing light,

when habit is the skeleton, the wall

erected out of custom.

We are as grim as shrouds,

definitive as death

or stripped bare trees which grow

within in stark and raving winter:

we equivocate,

glib tongues dance in fat quadrilles:

but still

we hear within the silver syllables,

the labials, the undulant song

that shapes a secret world,

as if

some pagan beast in myth

had moaned his beauty into notes of love and fear.

We hear

this song, as palpable as kisses,

but we are mute as graven images:

we are the pointed tears of willows weeping

over old graves.

© 2010 Charlotte Merrill Jensen