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You are done.
And yet rust still moves along the sculptures,
and sleep is somehow a white snake,
snuffed lamp,
sidewalk darkened under newsprint.
Flowers arrive at the train station.
A low monotone persists, close air.
Some tired parameter forms
around nothing, or the wish of somewhere,
villages green with sheep,
children sleeping on their luggage.
I can see
how many times you've stood here, or just here,
pasties burnt into your hand and the tracks
as a dog sniffing corridor through corridor.
I think I could understand, in some years,
when I've seen all the streetfolk, their sons after,
seen them pawning coffee and then
in blue suits on the High Street.
I know
to watch the cemeteries sink
each term must pull ache down, into your legs,
like an algae.
But you'd like it here.
People move quietly through lamplight.
Blind horses bend to the salt, the city's slow sadness
an old tortoise treading water.
Too many days are wan and soft,
rattling so many windowpanes.
The steeples are still black.
The street breathing, still, its ancient breath
calls up the moss-owls, the knotted
grandfather clocks, fish caught and released,
living well, young animals eating all
the night air, as always, living and crying out
and thinking sometimes
of the dead.
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