I threw myself on the mercy of the court.
Everything had grown silent:
The midnight sky, the village dogs,
The trees which only a moment ago were agitated
For a reason known only to themselves.
My judge had disappeared.
Then in a lit upstairs window
I saw her gloriously undressed for bed.
My defender, too, had walked off.
I saw the light of her cigarette
At the end of the driveway,
And then all was shadow and danger.
I knelt in the grass,
Admiring the majesty of the sky,
The magnitude of its indifference
Above the leaves beginning to stir again
As if at the sight of quickly built gallows.