Crossing the Water

Wuthering Heights The horizons ring me like fag-gots, Tilted and disparate, and always unstable. Touched by a match, they might warm me, And their fine lines singe The air to orange Before the distances they pin evaporate, Weighting the pale sky with a solider color. But they only dissolve and dissolve Like a series of promises, as I step forward. There is no life higher than the grasstops Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind Pours by like destiny, bending Everything in one direction. I can feel it trying To funnel my heat away. If I pay the roots of the heather Too close attention, they will invite me To whiten my bones among them. The sheep know where they are, Browsing in their dirty wool-clouds, Grey as the weather. The black slots of their pupils take me in. It is like being mailed into space, A thin, silly message. They stand about in grandmotherly disguise, All wig curls and yellow teeth And hard, marbly baas. I come to wheel ruts, and water Limpid as the solitudes That flee through my fingers. Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass; Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves. Of people the air only Remembers a few odd syllables. It rehearses them moaningly: Black stone, black stone. The sky leans on me, me, the one upright Among all horizontals. The grass is beating its bead distractedly. It is too delicate For a life in such company; Darkness terrifies it. Now, in valleys narrow And black as purses, the house lights Gleam like smallchange.