My dream
took me
to the Skelettküste
“The Skeleton Coast”
between Kaokoveld
and Damaraland

where the whaleribs gape
long teeth
the waves lick through
and the rusting hulls covered
by a bare skin of sand
and dew

in my dreams like pale autumns
I gather you
and shed you again

and your name reverberates
as a lodged bone rocks in a strait

121

February
My city draws a frozen river deep into its heart

Death, a gold dog with three legs
walks with me
under the bright awnings

in the market
white almonds pour through my hands:
soul, a sieve of fingers

"An obscure darkness passes over me..."

An obscure darkness passes over me...
I feel death is my sister and friend, and I might clasp it to my breast, as I have clasped my sister and counted her breaths. The light presses on me like an insistent lover, dulls me, moves me to a hapless indolence. Death inures itself to me, protesting my life, which seems suddenly to be a stern figure in an ill-lit painting. Murmuring to me and with my sister's pale hands, death moves through a square arrested by snow, and I appalled by light am silent, am, in the opulent light, still.