I noticed the white mouth of moon
astonished and silent as a field of clouds
weaved at it but always parting
like waters will over a fin of rock
and thinking then
the meaning will unfold only in starless sleep worlds.

Standing beneath a roulette of sky
it is easy to confuse its superstitions,
and poets have long been bad shamans.
Poems will always have less certainty than
stone and sun and constellations,
less divinity though we all dream
of being our own god.

So I remember this night:
standing in a laneway as the cold
crumpled my breath and skin
while up and down the street lights fashioned
like bright fists amid darkness, and
televisions washed into dim rooms of
each house where pens slept sly and dangerous.