This Interpreted World

Outside, the rain is filling the immensity of Night
with the darkness that defines it, --
and those silver fists turn, like the blackest angels, within themselves
and plunge down on us as their own terrible dreamings of the world.

But each morning we wake & must make ourselves within it,
within the fluxing distances of this torrential world:
we step among the silver blades of puddles, upon
this broken, sliding back of stone and earth, constantly before
the moons of other's eyes; the stars don't even shield themselves
during the day but go on as pupils of light within the film of blue.

Perhaps I think that I'll find comfort
in the one Pacific fir upon the clearcut hill day after day,
the mud-splotched horse, white
and aging, facing always the same way beside the butcher's shop,
that we can celebrate at least the grief
of memory within a distant violin's resisting draw, or even praise
the slick ruffle of the crow's thick feathers as he settles on
the shoulder of the hissing road and bends to eat.

For so I find myself:
feeding, in this constant rain, on the detritus
of this collapsing world, catching glimpses of
a face in midnight puddles that others say is mine
but I must always wait a moment
before I can recognize
the curl of mouth, the piece of silver
in the eyes, the rain falling through my face.