A NEW YEAR II
This is here, you think, this is now.
Dry weeds, bear’s breech dead
by the asphalt. Desirous of place
you read the sky as a map.
You feel the hours. Midnight,
winter? It’s now, it’s here.
Snow had fallen, roof tiles
showed shadowy grey through white, you could hear
sparrows’ beaks tapping on stone.
The boy on the platform, you see
the bag by his shoes, how he moves
his shoulders, yawns, eats.
Till the train squeals past concrete,
the wind's pull fondles his hair. You think
a station in Germany, is it this late
you think. It’s all happening in grey convolutions
hissing beneath your skull. All,
all of it: the watery course of the tracks,
the stalks bled dry, tolling bells,
fireworks, the boy. It’s nothing,
a quivering cell wall, explosion, nothing.