Pieces for Other Lives

I
Encouragement meant nothing

Inside it
The miner would continue to
Crawl out of their dark bodies
Extending the darkness making
It hollow
And how could they be rightly paid

Darkness gathered on the money
It lived in the dies the miners pursued it what
Was their reward

Some might bring flowers saying Nothing can last
Some anyway
Held out their whole lives in their glass hands

Sweeter than men till past the time
Some with a pure light burned but over
Their heads even theirs
Soot wrote on the ceiling
An unknown word

Shutting your eyes from the spectacle you
Saw not darkness but
Nothing

On which the doors were opening

II
All that time with nothing to do
In that granite shed
The clinic by the rainy sea

While the doctor snake turned himself on at doors
In other rooms to study
Your life a small animal dying in a bottle

Out of what could be stolen and hidden you contrived
This model of the blood
A map in lost tubing and dead joints and you
Pointed out its comical story

It beings here it swells it goes along
It comes to the man sitting talking to a stick
Which he thinks is his dog or his wife
It comes to the river unwinding the stones
It takes up a thread it comes to the tailor saying
Thank you to his needle

Over and over here is the needle
It passes through his
One seam it comes to the door which is not shown

But which anyway is standing open
And beyond it there is

Salt water in unknown quantities

III
At one stroke out of the ruin
All the watches went out and
The eyes disappeared like martins into their nests

I woke to the slamming of doors and got up naked
The old wind vanished and vanished but was still there
Everyone but the cold was gone for good

And the carol of the miners had just ended