Scorched earth, the final notes or else the first,
bells and drums at the sea’s edge where they’ve built
bonfires against the coming dark, the last and worst
of the day, deep dusk overlapping
the shoreline, treeline, rockfall, hills as they melt
in secret bowls of blue, the wavetops folding
fire on fire... and just where music and sea are lost
to one another, where nothing can be seen and nothing felt,
they dance like broken things, unstrung and calling.

They are drinking the last of the wine having drunk
the last of the water. Something came out of the sea
slow and blind; they spiked it on a spit
and ate it bare-handed. There was nothing of comfort or blame.

And still the great storms making landfall, the ice-walls shelving,
going under, forests emptying into silence, a ghost out of flame,
through veils of smoke and smut, the blank
stare of angels as they tread the air, as they ransack the sublime.