Time for sleep. Time for a nightcap of grave music,
a dark nocturne, a late quartet, a parting song
bequeathed by the great dead in perpetuity.
I catch a glimpse sometimes of my own dead at the window,
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those whose physiognomy I share: thin as moths, as matchsticks,
they stare into the haven of the warm room, eyes ablaze.
It is Sunday a lifetime ago, a woman in a now-demolished house
sings `Michael Row the Boat Ashore' as she sets down
the bucket with its smooth folds of drinking water . . .
The steadfast harvest moon out there, entangled in the willow's
stringy hair, points my way home like T'ao Ch'ien's:
A caged bird
pines for its first forest, a salmon thirsts for its stream.