The Ancestors

When the night's coming and the last light falls

A weak child among lost shadows on the floor,

It is your listening: pulse heeds the strain

Of fore and after, wind shivers the door.

What masterful delay commands the blood

Breaking its access to the living heart?

Consider this, the secret indecision,

Not rudeness of time but the systaltic flood

Of ancient failure begging its new start:

The flickered pause between the day and night

(When the heart knows its informality)

The bones hear but the eyes will never see-

Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space

Come once a day to suffocate the sight.

There is no man on earth who can be free

Of this, the eldest in the latest crime.