Xantha Street

I close my eyes and all I see is rain

And bruised mouths lined above the silverware.

But rooms are empty as the country now:

The angels rise to Heaven splendidly

On page 289, but the evening still comes on.

Poorly cast in an eighth-rate Grand Guignol

Where every agonist proclaims his purity,

One's sight grows sharper in the glass:

The climate of murder hastens newer weeds,

And crippled neighbors wear divergent frowns

That no one saw before-Nailed up in a box,

Nailed up in a pen, nailed up in a room

That once enclosed you amiably, you write,

"Finished. No more. The end," signing your name,

Frantic, but proud of penmanship. Beasts howl outside;

Authorities, however, keep the pavements clean.

It is to them that every face is turned,

Who steady rooms this earthquake rocks,

Graphing some future, indistinct, already frayed.

These rooms of ours are those that rock the worst.

Cold in the heart and colder in the brain,

We blink in darkened rooms towards exits that are gone.