Exiled, to a vague uneasiness,
A whiff of her musk in the room,
And the wordless lumps of accusations
Lurking behind the furniture, the curtains,
Even the arrangements of the photographs,
The lull at the eye of the storm:
All around, the promises whirl invisibly
Of impending centrifugal violence.

The morning splinters on his groggy eyes,
As she leaves to catch the first train to work:
A touch, a hurried peck on the cheek,
And the day passes through the sieve of his eyes,
Oscillating with his biorhythm,
From one sleeping pill to another,
From one stale coffee-cup to another cigarette butt,
The minutes sewed to each other like buttons,
The selvedges of breakfast, lunch, dinner,
And the hours come out, perfectly tailored,
Just as they always do.

Before the Valium begins to act,
He crumples the silver foil
And its tawdry tinsel of a half-remembered togetherness
On the table by the bed;
Wrapping the ash-tray
With the thin gauze of smoke
Filtered out of his lungs.
Inside its metallic mouth,
He taps in those grey bits and pieces
Of brittle intimacy held together, all those years,
By innuendo and boredom.

The windowpane is misted
by the breath of ghosts.
Faces crowd and press on it
from the outside.
The moonlight makes it a mirror
with two faces:
but it reveals more than it reflects.

The glass is spectral
with hauntings of the past,
forgotten faces no one can recognize . . .
The words they speak
opalesce on the window
as the night drips luminously
into the garden.

There are whispers
on the glass tonight,
but what is left unsaid
is much more frightening . . .