Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray Each one than what had gone before Dust and ash everywhere Charted and limbless trunks of trees Stretching away on every side
Ash moving over the road And the sagging hands of blind wire Strung from the blackened lightpoles Whining thinly in the wind
The shape of a city stood in the grayness Like a charcoal drawing sketched across the waste
Nothing to see The cold and the silence If only my heart were stone No sign of life
The blackness she woke to on those nights Was sightless and impenetrable A blackness to hurt your ears with listening
No sound but the wind in the bare and blackened trees
She rose and stood toffering in that cold autistic dark With her arms outheld balance…