We know that the fires will all meet up

in darkness.

At that hour

you must repeat once more the formula of life

before the wrinkled almost extinguished sky.

Lost stars burn as they come down.

Every voice while it sings is much the same.

Every spirit climbs higher

along a single mountain path,

the trees shaking in the breeze from below.

Half way up all those ill timed meetings.

Life's houses torn out like teeth—

just a few holes left in the earth

and nothing in them.

One minute where absolute stillness holds.

The silence before last darkness.

On the hardly visible goat track

the shephard went off having lost his sheep.

He looked as if he would cry as he moved his head

before his flock of clouds

and everything that remains of this world

after the storm.