Everyone not here missed, released, soft hours
into the lake’s slow lapse of recall.
The bells tell it so — they told it so - it blanks,
only reflects the moon, table for one.

The moon spills the lake’s dark wine, alone
as stone, ovum, form before content.
Constant, it feels nothing, zero, nought;
it regards the endless absence of thought…

though the evening more alive, more richly coloured
than the day; and someone childless, footloose.