Weak sun after days of rain, an opening
that lets the sense of light through—
unlike in that city which is only
ever raining no matter what the time
of day or year, no matter where you might
flee to seek comfort from a different
clime. It didn’t use to feel so hostile,
it didn’t use to feel so cold. When
did the roofs of houses turn
into the backs of blades, when
did each house extinguish its lights
one by one on your approach? When
did even the eye adrift in the wide
grey desert above give up its surveilling,
when did it become this indifferent to all
the selfishness it should have burned below?
In the rundown house of your forebears, even
when the rats run nightly across the piano’s
hammer rails, no sound rues the rooms in which
a body could cocoon itself forever in felt.