We barter dreams for each sustaining breath

peer through fog at faces

once thought forgotten;

the power of a candle flame,

guttering

against the oblivion of a season

or a season of seasons,

thirty winters in a December’s handbreadth.

Singer at the end of an age

sated with bitter truths,

I would have liked to write you a love song,

find words fitted to your skin;

close eyes glazed by caring too much

with fingertips of a shooting star

Let the dawn come,

he says,

but

I don’t want to wake up,

do I?