(notes on a film)

 We heard the lights break, one by one
 Steps the surly darkness made into our chatter
 Raising a cloud of silent dust.

 Some day, when nothing is strange, and we're old, tell me
 What lights you laid hold of then
 How you pulled forth from your own bones
 Lingering eyes, lips like a berry, black and silver
 The shape of that woman every man
 Embraces in the dark.
 You -- with no props, no cigarette,
 naked as an ember -- sting like iodine
 in nerves that don't have names,
 wordlessly demanding
 rites I learned in the grave of sleep.

 Mad, more than sane, blind from dreams of the waking world
 (I've seen you there, among the bare bones, looking at your name)
 You felt the wind change like your lover's breath
 And before the last light swelled and poppped
 Looked out between the sound and flash
 Through death and time, at me as I was not
 To let me see your fear.