GREAT RECKONING IN A LITTLE ROOM

All the colors of the trammeled covers in a bed of opium.

The sheen of this, blood-loved as the wound in the haunch of a panther

Downed in an asylum of his own. No, there were no keepers there.

Yes, I am dissembling. In Sweden, the room to put you down was dim,

Candles of no-color held in brown sand-bottomed bags, lit

Like the crooked path on the way to an old sacrarium. After the offering

In a hammered copper bowl filled with big black grapes, I will let you go.

When I say yes, the streetlamp’s cylinder of light will come into the room.

It is the last light you will ever stand inside the perfect circle of.

Swallow swallow, deep as the skirts of lingonberries brambling in a blacker forest

                         And shallow, shallow, you will lay you down.