In this season of the long shadow,

            Of sunsets like rust and discarded lips

            I grow tired of the 

            Self 

            Its abandoned ports, dilapidated wharves,

            Still green waters dense with certainty,

            The wrinkled inlets with their crumbling depositories

            Perched like sleepy vultures on the heights 

            I have tired of 

            Colonial campaigns and 

            Sluggish ceremonies of remembrance, 

            Of ignorance seductive as a plume and

            Sharp as slate

            I am tired 

            More from pride than from disgust,

            From unused limbs at the periphery,

            From all the crowded selves

            Outside that hem me

            Inward, 

            Their urgent succulence of 

            Predictable delights, 

            The armories of beauty and forgetfulness

            And you are tiresome too,

            Like me, 

            Your eyes, like mine,

            Your secrets and your promises

            No longer beckoning,

            So sheer the bend of past and

            Overbright the captive stream