Headlights
All is quiet
A dog barks
the moon pulls over a cloud
watches
Then a gate is closed. metallic. steeling. a man
in a uniform closes it and
now
the sound is everywhere gates and uniforms and men
and that sound of gates a
long
sound, deliberately loud
the women have their eyes only
sunken
cried out eyes, dry, thin again
holding, unheld
hearing only cries born
or unborn
A particular burden
the whisper of passing things:
a limousine, a clumsy metaphor, a posy of
truths,
falling
headlights fixed full
because no-one
ever
travels the other way