Windchimes glisten in the chill,
dripping louder than the storm now an hour toward the eastern horizon.
Houses sit in their garden rows, dark as the feathered skulls of crow
      in sun-bright snow, cold eyes closed against a dream

of exodus. The wind dies; the wind rises. The banality of dawn,
newborn and blind as the nothing between the scattered impetus of stars,
      screams of its use in the cavernous midnight of distance:

A singularity of impatient air from within the mudded wood of April.
      Deep the grievance with the world in this world. All despair.

      And song but fire calling itself to fire, and as contagious.