I grow cold

I grow cold,

bleeding under the flesh

The hair – sings – like grass on stormy moors

Somewhere on nascent planets

Purple skies and shivering ebony trees speak hurriedly of chaos and life spirals

A silver bird drinks endlessly at the end of the day and patches of the night grab its wings

Somewhere on desolate rafts, they still listen and hold the fast-decaying clay

A blind moon is buried in the endless graveyard

I grow old,

Softly, softly

The muslin descends from ceilings and taxis

I must have been drinking then, the lips had turned red,

The tender clouds kept floating outward where the lights were wane

Mournful and stained, the gutters whistle

And the

Sweet, velvet shade of the evening lifts

Was it your hand, was it the curve of your feet, or simply the turn of your back and the rustling of your hair

What caught the snatch of dawn, what held the carcass of time and

painted infinite lives on their salt skin

I give back to the stars,

The millennia will find a way

To resuscitate dust and create little citadels

Where the lion and the lamb drink at the pool

I give back to the soil,

The roots weave tapestries of hands

Simple, small, pink hands

They must have asked for you they must have scraped at your chest they must have beaten to sweet water your

familiar incense

I give back the caravans of fate

The road is beautifully curved

The serpent around the night mountain

The rains that came, the flooding at the back of the brain,

I give back,

I grow old

The deathless preponderance of the cycle, the glowing crucifix at the bottom of the ocean,

I return,

I grow cold.

36 lines.