Fasten

that once becoming entailed this known room

this window, and its breath of what’s cooking

for others, in other places not here, unsustaining

the same bronze way the bronze walls sustain –

that, after all, we become our selfs eventually

only the lines engrained in skin from such sleep

or the renewed way we say how was your day

to simply mean, I wasn’t there, I wish I’d been –

that stillness is a shape you inhabit with sleep

without meaning a thing, but so the time flows

around your veil, not thought of but by turning

at half-closed doors, to wish myself back to you –

slow pulse, closed eyes, entangled in mechanics

& sheets’ dope, the blind birds swell against blue

as a day washes the brickwork clean, hearts have

only so many beats to count down, & don’t know.