After Rome, a season of cloud. The roads grew over.
A huddled hungry people waited
through an empire until that winter when the river froze.
They rode over roaring and burned all the shining cities,
burned the books.
Now, in these uncertain hours the rain falls like blows,
and all eyes turn to the shore, fearful of ships and strangers,
the wolf in the wood, the face in the window.
Monks copy words by impotent candles,
hoarding memory
in hard quill strokes.
In dreams, I am visited particularly by one young monk,
small and stammering, with broken fingernails.
He transcribes with a peculiar fire,
hoping this fidelity
may save his soul.
He treads through my sleep, breaking little paths
with his chapped feet, hovering
with black quill
on the edge of waking.