‘If the Perceptive Organs close, their
Objects seem to close also.’
                                Blake: Jerusalem

The house-snake dwells here still
under the threshold
but for months I have not seen it
nor its young, the inheritors.

Light and the wind enact
passion and resurrection
day in, day out
but the blinds are down over my windows,
my doors are shut.

When after the long drought at last
silver and darkness swept over the hills
the dry indifferent glare in my mind’s eye
wavered but burned on.