Anam Cara

THE NIGHT

February 1, 1994

Nothing can make the night stay outside,

It pours in everywhere, smothers my room

With black air prepared in some unseen cave,

Tightens around my skull the root silence

Of that room in rock; nothing broke the dark

Except the tick of raindrops from above;

Centuries seeping through the limestone

To point a cold finger of stalactite

At emptiness never softened by breath;

Where the sore of absence was never felt

In cold that fasted solid from light,

A hermit space that let in no question.

This dark is all eyes; but cannot feel

How it blackens the breath and the heart.

It weighs me down as it would a stone.