The color of silence is the oyster's color 
Between the lustres of deep night and dawn. 
Earth turns to absence; the sole shape's the sleeping 
Light — a mollusk of mist. Remote, 
A sandspit hinges the valves of that soft monster 
Yawning at Portugal. Alone wakeful, lanterns 
Over a dark hull to eastward mark 
The tough long pull, hidden, the killing 
Work, hidden, to feed a hidden world. 
Muteness is all. Even the greed of the gulls 
Annulled, the hush of color everywhere 
The hush of motion. This is the neap of the blood, 
Of memory, thought, desire; if pain visits 
Such placelessness, it has phantom feet. 
What's physical is lost here in ignorance 
Of its own being. That solitary boat, 
Out fishing, is a black stroke on vacancy. 
Night, deaf and dumb as something from the deeps, 
Having swallowed whole bright yesterday, replete 
With radiance, is gray as abstinence now. 
But in this nothingness, a knife point: pleasure 
Comes pricking; the hour's pallor, too, is bladed 
Like a shell, and as it opens, cuts.