Dusk
 
A battery of silence halts the day 
And stirs a fabric air out of the loom 
Of stillness, something to be tucked away 
Before the night descends upon a room. 
 
Low on the hand-scrawled wall, low on the floor, 
Descended low, as story-books are shut 
Against the heart's assignment and the hour, 
Night pauses for a while, and then slips out 
 
Into the city's tired and peopled street, 
A blind pedestrian lording traffic still 
That rides along the shuffling rush of feet, 
While day dies dully from a distant hill. 
 
Lost in the dragnet of the sky, the sun, 
Relic of unskilled fish, swims out of reach, 
Far from the swathe of green, the sea-laved one, 
Beyond the stained and fabled, pebbled beach; 
 
Beyond the logic of the bled horizon 
Where tilts the tip of mourning and despair, 
Beyond the hour that blotches all description 
Vivid against the corner-grief of air; 
 
Into the caverns of the sea to sleep 
Beneath some monument of sand and shark, 
Of seaweed, down the sunk and submerged deep, 
Inviolate, unfathomed as the dark. 
 
Shoreward the softly wading feet of night 
Tangle with salt and surf to subtly spin 
A sudden pattern, intricate and bright, 
Against the void that it must wander in: 
 
Far from the precint of some fatuous fire 
Streaking across the avenues like faith 
Which reaffirms man's genius or desire -- 
And calmly smiles, and moves.  The hour is late. 

--Carlos A. Angeles