Roll back the stone from the sepulchre's mouth!

I sense disturbance deep within, as if some sorcery



had shocked the occupant's hand alive again, back

to compose a document in calligraphy so dragonish



that a single misstep made it necessary to stop

right then and there and tear the botched draft up,



begin again and stop, tear up again and scatter

a squall of paper lozenges atop the architecture



that the mind designs around it, assembling a city

somewhat resembling the seaport of your birth,



that blinking arrangement of towers and signage

you now wander underneath, drawn forward by the spell



of the sea's one scent, by the bell of the night ship

that cleaves through the mist on its path to the pier.



Surrender to that vision and the labor apprehensible

as you take to the streets from the refuge of a chair



so emphatically comfortable even Lazarus himself

would have chosen to remain unrisen from its velvet,



baffling the messiah, His many onlookers muttering

awkwardly to themselves, downcast till a sudden



dust devil spirals in from the dunes—a perfect excuse 

to duck back indoors. (The sand spangles their eyes,



the little airborne stones impinge upon such faces

as only Sorrow's pencil would ever dare to sketch,



and even then, it wouldn't be a cakewalk, you realize.

A dust devil at sea would be called a waterspout.)



You fear that you have been demanded into being

only to be dropped on the wintry streets of this 



imagination rashly, left easy prey for the dockside

phantoms, unwatched and unawaited, and I know 



what you mean, almost exactly. This cardboard city

collapses around us; another beautiful document



disassembles into anguish—a cymbal-clap—and we can't

prevent it. At one the wind rises, and the night ship



trembles, drowsing back into its silver cloud. At two it embarks

upon a fiercer derangement. We are in this together.



And we will find protection only on the night ship.