Night Watchman
 
 
The night watchman writes poems 
on an old sheet of cardboard,
sweeps up words as if sweeping up hair.
 
Every evening at midnight, he makes his rounds,
combs the halls for derelicts, listens for
that odd sound of human rustling.
 
Then sits down to weak tea beneath
a brilliant lamp, writing love poems
to the faces of distant women he sees on the street.
 
His wife died in a fire, her body burnt
then blew away, a thin stream of ashes
floated out the bedroom door.
 
He was on duty that evening and
a storm tore through the factory, 
a long legged rain battering 
the windows but not enough to curb a fire.
 
After hearing the news he stayed on duty,
preferred the silent edifice, the dirty
shores of tiled floor, the swobbing
to the sobbing, the heartbeat finally slow.
 
When the light slipped out
the factory door, he wrote in the perfect
enclosure of a tunneled womb, 
he at last alone with a dull mourning,
writing words he bearly heard,
the soft mounting of night music.