If you would only look out,
you would see the star-studded sky and a
swooning sickle moon, and down below
a fleet of quiet snails sailing gently over
lawns scented with newly cut grass.
You might glimpse the ugly awkward
gait of a dishevelled fox, trotting across
a road that had lost its cars by midnight
to the garages of suburbia; and perhaps
spot a motionless hedgehog sleeping
soundly beneath its mattress of bristles.
If you would just open up your ears
to the night outside, you might hear
the howling owl in the primary school wood, and
the on-the-hour Swiss cuckoo-clock over
at Number Eight crying out, absurdly, for urgency,
through an opened window.
You would hear cats wauling
and hear the swish of bats in the thick
dark air, hear the wind softly turning the
leaves of trees in search of only the wind
knows what, and perhaps hear the tide,
which sighs through the night from far
away to someone, somewhere.
But you won’t. You are lost in the night
within, that deepest darkness where no
stars shine, no moon lies recumbent,
a birdless night shunned by animals, too,
a night without roads, without lamps,
a nightless night on the edge of death.