Bewildered

Bewildered as night advances,
An orange juice and spritzer
Watching the floor dancers recite the beauty
Of their bodies into a manner that had
Glimpses of possibilities, the rest
Just hunkam-bunkam.
And I do not know if he was sorrowful
Or not, his coupled hands like littled
Lies that hung deceitfully about his lips,
The ascendancy of universes fallen with smiles
That have no opinion or suggestion but their own.
But then, then God was not easy,
An emptiness that falls to uncertainties,
Easing, however lightly, the science of departures.
Now the moon is quiet, the soft echo
of the bright white night, Susie from college peopling
Conversation with pitched philosophies gentled
With hemp and the scant scent of ale that for me
Is especially awful having worn my Father's brew
Until midnight, until then.

But it has gone now, whatever
It was that brought about such feeling
Gone and left the world clear again,
Fresh mercies, fresh moments, fresh opportunities
For pills and bottles that gather in vigour
To speak farewells as they might do somewhere
Along the way, somewhere where the sky
Is never refreshed and in which the small visions
Of the evening change, change utterly until the hood
Of the moon hangs herself in white-lit stars
That do not shine so much as dazzle.

John Cornwall