I
Early day. Grey the air.
Grey the boards of the house, the bench,
red the dilated potflower’s petals
blue the sky that will rend through
this fog.
Dark summer’s outer reaches:
thrown husk of a moon
sharpening
in the last dark blue.
I think of your eye.
(dark the light
that washes into a deeper dark).

An eye, coming in closer.
Under the lens
lashes and veins grow huge
and huge the tear that washes out the eye,
the tear that clears the eye.

II
When heat leaves the walls at last
and the breeze comes
or seems to come, off water
or off the half-finished moon
her silver roughened by a darkblue rag
this is the ancient hour
between light and dark, work and rest
earthly tracks and star-trails
the last willed act of the day
and the night’s first dream
If you could have this hour
for the last hour of your life.