Ray Malone

Sounding 38

Now the day has drained away
the last drop left to gleam
all too brief the eye to see it
there then sudden gone

there’s nothing to be done
but be as the night is
the site of the dark erasing
of the day’s traces

there’s nothing to be done
but be as the music is
the sound of the sounding out
of its own slow effacing

Cinder 90

A kind of mirror, the bend of a tree
away from the wind, and winter on
winter, swept of its leaves, lean, letting
the cold light in, trembling as the ice,
closing in, tightens, as branch after
branch of it, darkens, draws against
the sky its every brittle finger,
each bone bared to the air, each limb
alive, to the life reflected there

The call

So seen, so said, the sad eyes
she cast, calling after me

come, but he could not

the fact is as the fact was,
as the station and the train
and the drawing away

as the far apart he sees from time to time

as the call

he calls to mind

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