Crossing The Water

<BR> Wuthering Heights <BR> <BR> The horizons ring me like fag-gots, <BR> Tilted and disparate, and always unstable. <BR> Touched by a match, they might warm me, <BR> And their fine lines singe<BR> The air to orange <BR> Before the distances they pin evaporate, <BR> Weighting the pale sky with a solider color.<BR> But they only dissolve and dissolve <BR> Like a series of promises, as I step forward.<BR> <P> There is no life higher than the grasstops <BR> Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind<BR> Pours by like destiny, bending <BR> Everything in one direction. <BR> I can feel it trying <BR> To funnel my heat away. <BR> If I pay the roots of the heather<BR> Too close attention, they will invite me<BR> To whiten my bones among them.<BR> <P> The sheep know where they are, <BR> Browsing in their dirty wool-clouds, <BR> Grey as the weather.<BR> The black slots of their pupils take me in.<BR> It is like being mailed into space, <BR> A thin, silly message. <BR> They stand about in grandmotherly disguise, <BR> All wig curls and yellow teeth <BR> And hard, marbly baas.<BR> <P> I come to wheel ruts, and water <BR> Limpid as the solitudes <BR> That flee through my fingers.<BR> Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass; <BR> Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.<BR> Of people the air only <BR> Remembers a few odd syllables. <BR> It rehearses them moaningly: <BR> Black stone, black stone.<BR> <P> The sky leans on me, me, the one upright<BR> Among all horizontals.<BR> The grass is beating its bead distractedly.<BR> It is too delicate<BR> For a life in such company; <BR> Darkness terrifies it. <BR> Now, in valleys narrow <BR> And black as purses, the house lights<BR> Gleam like smallchange.<BR>