Night Sleeps

Night sleeps in his corner of the world.
The hours go by, as the verses in his head
Take turns in looking for their own corners
Of his world. Tonight is not the same
As the other nights of terror and truth.
Some days, just some days, the minutes
Speed up to catch up on him, and in
The betweenness of sleep and song
Is the long wait for home.
At last, home to where the hours
Get tired as the bodies that live
In the entrances of temples he will never own
Like that one church where the Black Christ
Dies to watch him from post-mortem stillness
Like the sirens that have found the way
To stop making warnings to riverbank
Dwellers from his sleepless city where lives
Are subsidized by the people's prayers to absent gods.

June 23/11
Marikina

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