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    As light continued to pour from
    Orifices rent in the darkness,
Blooming like a pale flower or the
Outflung corpus of a vast, ghostly
    Zooplankton in the deep ocean,
Odours began to rise up to me
    That seemed to communicate
Inarticulate parts of my past self :
The fester of desiccated geraniums,
Rotten apples crushed into soil,
    The smell of hay beneath the
Bodies of sleeping animals, the
Discharge in the air after a rain :
    The odours of my hot breath
Sharp in the air before me as I
Woke in the night, and returned
Into sleep : the commingling of oil
And woodsmoke and dust with the
    Reek of feces, with the effluvia of
Violet and magnolia and hyacinth :
A soft taste of grey morning air.

The milk-white particles spread
As if across a river in the night,
And it seemed that a heavy wind
Came over the lights so that they
Nodded in place like paper lanterns.
       An ache flowered in my ribcage.