after Erazim Kohák

Our words begin to atrophy
            beside a waning summer fire,
like sparks who would revise the stars

but fizzle out before they reach
            the canyon rim. Cool night descends
like geese upon a lucid lake,

or like a friend who need not speak
            to say, whose company is just
as sweet as solitude, or is

itself a kind of solitude.
            We watch a few last flames die out
across the incandescent coals

until a virgin darkness drapes
            the woods, and day is reconciled
to night, and night to day, and the moon

emits its passive radiance
            that all should come to rest, and sleep
restore the fragile dreams of men.