The drunks sang hero to the moon, that like
a bill-collector, stalled along the streets,
wishing my old man home. A concrete lake,
the warehouse glittered under the wind-swayed lights,
where the policeman stepped, head bowed, and whistling,
amazing the silence with his loneliness.
The dawn came grayly, with the gulls,
the slow ruckus of the milk-truck, and my mother
padding, a sheeted figure, to the door,
opening to a cold, tin-foil horizon.
The bottles she gathered rang like a white money
left by a clumsy fairy: in my dream
the church-clock clanged with a country tongue,
the sparrows clicked like pennies on the pavement,
saying the world was round again, like her.