Night Watch

Outside the walls of black flint,
Eyeless.
How pale in sleep you lie.
Love: my love is just a breath
blown on the pane and dissolved.

The web of the spider is ripped with rain,
The geese fly on into the black cloud.

What can I do for you?
What can I do for you?
Can the touch of a finger mend
what a finger's touch has broken?

Blue-eyed now, yellow haired,
I stand in my old nightmare
beside the track, while you,
and over and over and always you,
plot into the death cars.
Sometimes you smile at me,
and I, I smile back at you.
How sweet the nature of the station master's roses!
How pure, how poster-like, the colors of this dream.

- Adrienne Rich