Sad Steps

Groping back to bed after a piss / I part thick curtains, and am startled by / The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness. // Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie / Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky. / There’s something laughable about this, // The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow / Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart / (Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below) // High and preposterous and separate — / Lozenge of love! Medallion of art! / O wolves of memory! Immensements! No, // One shivers slightly, looking up there. / The hardness and the brightness and the plain / Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare // Is a reminder of the strength and pain / Of being young; that it can’t come again, / But is for others undiminished somewhere.