After Hours

1.

I sit in darkness.

I sit in human silence.

I begin to hear

the eloquent night.

The night of wet trees,
with the moonlight sliding
over the shoulder in a
haze of dampness and
subsiding heat.

2.

The world of this night

resounds from heaven,

with the savage innocence

of a million unknown creatures.

While the earth eases and cools
off like a huge wet living thing,
the enormous vitality of its
music, all around me, pounds
and rings and sobs and echoes.

3.

Until it gets everything

and swamps the whole world

in its neutral madness,

which never becomes an

orgy because all

things are innocent.