He gives up the ghost

As if a cloud, contorted by lunacy
(clear sky, just the cloud there,
floating), were suddenly to
reach out, the immediate midnight
falters, almost flickers, almost
dead on the grass here -
feeling a wan song, sinking,
feeling something still remembered;
I'm dry, I'm a stretched skin, searching
out a reason, a feeling, taut 
on the skyline (flat, look - for
miles the moonlight finds no
lump to cast a shadow) - I
cast an elongated shadow, but
pale, infertile.

This ground is clear - a small space,
seared by the summer fires that race
long tracts of shrivelled brown across
borders, reels motley and
dishevelled along black bare branches
in winter, in hollows of winter.
There is something connected with borders;
there is something rolling through the
cracked season, something that pulls
and uproots and tells the birds to
fly south in a v of black feathers,
in a v of surfaced knowledge.
I envy the ability to leave.

     with gilded lungs and a hump to
swing a bell from; a masterpiece
of crowded laughter, the night's horizon,
a sudden grin.  Separated by an iron
rail; two lakesided sets of ripples,
two basins, and the only 
black night's treescape's falling

But if the clouding of your breath
clings to colder surfaces; if summer
and the sun months mix in a
hidden hollow of the long landscape...
Watch the even conversation - gambit,
counter, thrust, and final clean
convulsion of defeat (with one flick of
the finger) scar this cleanliness.
They clap their hands, and you thank them;
they're employing you - I could go,
but not now, because of the winter
you understand - and anyway, you
remember looking out through the window
at the night, and the condensation 
made the street grotesque; that's a
sort of reversal of something - it
reached out to me then; maybe
I'm just being fooled.

( to the contents page.)