Four A.M.

The hollow, unearthly hour of night.
Swaying vessel of emptiness.
 
Patron saint of dead planets
and vast, unruly spaces receding in mist.
 
Necklace of shattered constellations:
soon the stars will be extinguished.
 
A cellblock sealed in ice.
An icehouse sealed in smoke.
 
The hour when nothing begets nothing,
the hour of drains and furnaces,
 
shadows fastened to a blank screen
and the moon floating in a pool of ashes.
 
The hour of nausea at middle age,
the hour with its face in its hands,
 
the hour when no one wants to be awake,
the scorned hour, the very pit
 
of all the other hours,
the very dirge.
 
Let five o'clock come
with its bandages of light.
 
A life buoy in bruised waters.
The first broken plank of morning.