let there be a softness in this tense spark a light, nothing to hold and have, a fight, nothing won a grip that won’t move and falter with the unequal hand that makes it move and doesn’t make it nervous for no release as I tremor in shock I lose myself in accounting for the earthquake and all the after-tremors. for where is it going that it never gets there on a road that I can take as far as I want to go into this stark darkness that raises up a range, ends slips behind a black mountain sleep, and on the way the darkness are wind-blown clouds that extinguish swirling yellow leaves on the wet road on which I don’t want to leave but where I always am the wind is the blackness that moves in on the distance between things the rain is the leaves that fall the clouds are in our minds and move on over black mountains on the edge of the background at the end of things, let sleep slip its dreams in these places let there be some release
24 October 1973