Once, in a sun-bleached street: lights, paler

than winter skin, a dead man's eyes spoke—

His looks were graver than kind, bore the old monstrous things.

In some dark and feud, game of intolerable loads—

He said, "I reckon sleep falls, when the  limpid rain drops,"

Bright hopes never ring in bells of glass stones.

Upon a living man's breath, peace is a vintage wine—

"It falls most ardently, tenderly, you barely catch it," I said.

Neither good/bad but innocent and wild (a mystified child).

You'll say, it's a dream being true while old times

dread, lilies bloom red in stems of depth—

"Pluck some, sorrowful faces worn that scorn (while you sulk in cold)."

Shyly and courteously he smiled, "I'd died once

in a dream, consumed by speck flames!"

Stopping low, pity lies in the twigs of eyes.

He asked no questions, light swam through sleepless

doom, uttered with burning breath, "Have you seen a man with gloom?"

I shake my head, while a heap of ash travels down in the town.

— 20th September, 2023