Sisters

Anna sits beside her research
Silence in the dappled moonlight
Sleeping cat and dying fire
Embers of the past conspire
All her books are closed and scattered
And she feels that nothing matters to her

Outside this dream her sister frequents
Like a cobweb catching fragments
She approaches like a vision
She says "Anna, do you hear me?"
But the picture's always shuttered
All the distant thoughts that flutter to her

I can see them all, I can hear them call
And as she falls I lean to say good-bye
Breathing all the wasted hours
Talking to the dying flowers
Dwarfed by spires and tangled towers
We don't ask the reason why

Anna comes and goes in shadows
Paintings of the open windows

Her photograph is always faded
Her sister's eyes are blank and shaded
Don't you understand her science
Merging in a strange alliance to her

We're together in the future
You and I and her together
All our fated are intermingled
We are plural, we are single
We are leaving for a meeting
And last seen the weather sleeting for her