The Tempered Sky
The artefact of all our futures gains
midheaven: overhead, the comet's wedge
instructs us in regret, a swordsweep flash
and frenzy of lost time, of worlds that pass.
In tribute showers years disintegrate.
The carpet-rucks of clouds relax to blue
as if the sky took root in catchfire lives
and time was not a forfeit calculus.
The truth was what we made it, personal,
without conclusions but for being made,
the atoms of the house, pepperpots
of stars, a soot of change, and that was all.
What else should trouble us, that continents
sink back into the earth, that fossil leaves
suspended by a stony petiole
recall the oak's advance, its dimpled shade?
The stone is warm, the leaf within it warm
to touch, ten million suns and not a breath
to mark our presence here, or verify
the meteor insistence that we lived.
Our voices weightless in the air, we walk
through dreams as through a calm at evening
and rake this vacuum arc for signs, our talk
a smalltalk wish for worlds that will not wake.
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