Compared to the pitiless pits of space
that reign after,
knotted
and exhausted
and opaque with the traces—
the silences
weakly abiding
before words are spoken—
are innocent and noble;
perfect riddles
to be
solved only by ordinary time,
virginal vistas: fresh breeze and
seascape panorama,
small and soft pools, clear—but quavering,
alien, uninhabitable—
because
doomed
to last only
in those dampest
delicate folds of our memory.
