Sandstone Steps

Shudder, man, and claw your ribs,
No spirits watch you here;
So crawl this endless waste
This endless waste of every fathomed place
You've born and let since disappear.

That elbow on the windowsill;
That glimpse of wrist, like fruit,
Sunning on the windowsill.

The kerosene of your brilliant life;
The sluggish wake of fumes and spent routine.
Resilient once, now stooped and brittle,
They've left you now, your wife and spittle,
For the pleasures of a tangerine.

Jumping puddles, crushing snails --
That time alone when you first found guilt
And stared, and stared, and stared:
A grain of past beneath your nails.

Shudder man, you broken thing,
You tired and feeling stepped-on thing,
The flames that burned your life away,
Those brilliant flames that burned your life away
Are absent from your quivering eye
But branded in your dusty hide:
As wrinkles of your yesterday;
And have packed your paltry shape with all the dust of your design.

Flicker now, and blink away,
The wind will strip you on your knees:
Debris, and dust, and pieces to make another's memory;
To be gripped until they sink, undone.

And when there's dust,
and dust enough,
We'll pile a dune
to the sun.