"HERE ON THE WINDY BALCONY..."

Here on the windy balcony
we face together, you and I
the desert of the apogee:
clasp cold hands, begin to see
the future and its final sky.

There will be some who see it all
as distant glory; drum to war
those who will even fight and fall
in the ecstasy of the animal.
We know what we are fighting for,

whose monstrous teeth are at our throat
bloody and brilliant and stark;
and why we shall not shut him out
at last, or hope to go about
and fish for comforts in the dark.

The world is weary of harness now,
the open, the tumultuous:
shutter the window, let the bough
be plucked that blossoms God knows how.
The smell of death is over us.

Hope will break the windlass, and
achievement slip the rising mesh:
sit still, count your contraband
- the cloths of night, the imploring hand,
the secret shuttle weaving flesh.