The Understood

Alone
I wander back
Where sea and dirt meet
The sky is grey as wire and just as sharp
The wet scuttling wind gusts over thin rock

The understood

Eyes stumbling to the squirt of a weak sun
I consider decline
Think of the brittle halo round my head
The pills I choke down
As if I could shed
That unforgiving machine we call time

The understood
The understood
The understood

Tapping its rusty talons on the bones of night
My blood is on its breath
And in its mould white gaze I see all death
And all my feeble wishes wrapped in stone

Sunk underneath the black sublime
Where evening's ocean sweeps its line
The understood

Sunk far beneath the swelling time
Where evening's ocean sweeps its line
The understood

So, ask me with kind fires how I know
To care no more for the sunset than for
The retchings of a sick dog
These cold shores spit my reply
Soon I will wade below
And watch the autumn stars falling like snow

The understood