Wraiths

This empty season the cold is gone.
Mist walks the streets, I follow a wraith, unconnected, passing through.
Passing through?
Lucky people play a game of chance, warming the winter sun with smiles the size of kings.
Holy water sprinkles the air, clothes and eyes get damp, time to kill,
Why won't time be killed?
Phones ring in houses, in hands, in pockets, inside a dog's mouth.
Callers end with lover's greetings, promising the end of another long night
And the cold stays gone, breathing gently in dusty forests, as taillit jackets flash close.
In this city there're wraiths walking, sometimes in the alley, or riding a horse, or walking two dogs.
What will be the endgame?
Down in a well in the east, seven seconds of sunlight blind a broken man
It blinds him still, till he awakes and sees the dark, cold as labyrinths of the nameless ones.
I met a man of magic, a scar across his face.
A scar a scar a scar a scar
He noted he had walked quite far, from the ghost of Sesquehana to the bums of Times Square.
Once there were bums, and jazz and solitary jungle moaners in a dream of rainbows.
Now there are wraiths in a city, passing through like summer lightning
With marks on their faces or long black tails that bend easily.
Where is the fever? The cold fever of the biting wind?
Who knows where is the other life.
-Beq
29.1.2007