City Harbor
How often we come to a headland and a city opens,
as when mid-region stars in the Milky Way cast shadows,
and the Great Rift appears—
migration, a swarm, an exceeding leap.
Where dogmen rode the crane hook into the air,
and summer’s linseed oil blew over the water,
we follow—dreams our nerve tonic where nerve is needed.
The bowl will be broken at the fountain,
The doors will be shut in the streets.
The keepers of the houses will tremble.
But something before we know it is here, or there,
makes us go on, even with mists rising,
to sit in the shade of some trees,
thinking, perhaps, that this finally is the last
of Earth. To be perplexed, but say nothing of it
to anyone. To feel a little light on the skin,
light that enlarges everything
and then lets us alone.
