The night was an arc to a failed story:
a piper piped, the church didn’t burn,
still and pompous on the golden hill,
children left out in the rain, priests
counting their silver coins—and there I sat,
with the wood stove stoving, in terrors
of self-annihilation.

It was always this thought
that brought him forth
from that miraculous world asunder.
There, at the window, his forehead pressed
to the pane. And from the outside
what he before saw & felt from within
he saw and felt again: terror, terror,
then a sudden gush of revelation.

Robert spoke, “Although I know not this!
I know far worse than this—” This?
The terror of the self grew
in the room, growing—
Life poured down from his cliffs.
Emptying what he had been
and no longer was,
Robert cried at the window
and I admired him as a bird
of prey—compelled by some
horrible instinct, tonight,
I could not let him inside.