PLAIN SONG

Where is the crack, the small crack

Where the dead come out

                                              and go back in?

Only the dead know that, the speechless and shifting dead.

But it does ooze, half-inch by half-inch,

Under the doorway of dejection,

                                                    under the brown, arthritic leaves.

The clock strikes, but the hands don’t move.

                                                                    The night birds outside

The window are gone away.

The halo around the quarter-moon

Means no good.

Is this the hour of our undoing?

                                                         If so, we are perfected.