The Graeae    

For a while, it had grown
used to us, our wan
fingers flickering before it
like locusts in the encroaching dark.
The eye a stillness
we could not fill, its shared vision
slows our steps and rings us in silence.

Mornings, we see the world rising
as a glassy opal, or a raw
pearl—the jewel-matter of a dream—
and for one, the rushed form
of he who ransomed the seeing eye
from our encircling—gone now, nothing
but a glint in her skull
guttering as he went out.  

The birds wing back through
trees to their nest, as I pass
to the sister
whose turn it was �

opening the darkness
of her blind hand.