QUIETUS



It has gone very quiet in North America
and Europe is silent as a Sphinx.
Here on an Antipodean beach
the night is whitening in the east.

The sunlight touches here first
of all rocks in the sea, the wan dawn light
deftly fingers its way up the eastern
curve of the bowl. Shadows

appear and then retreat. The side
turned into the night does not answer
our greetings and entreaties.
China is eerily uncommunicative.

It’s as if the north has ceased to exist
as anything other than a cardinal direction.
The sun ponderously rises; its
brightness transforms forest and mountain.

Darkness has fallen on London and New York.
No one answers the phone in Paris
and Moscow has stopped trolling the west.
The night rolls over all on the sun’s traces.

The silence widens and deepens.
Are they all ignoring us, giving us the proverbial
cold shoulder? Still, sunlight banishes
the shadows in this hemisphere.

It has gone very quiet in North America

and Europe is silent as a Sphinx.

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