Читать книгу Ordinary Time - Michael D. Riley - Страница 9

You worked while I was sleeping,

spirit slumped against the sill,

a blank house, an old address,

stale smells and dust.

I tilted up the cellar door

for a shovel’s freight of coal

slid down the silvered chute

into the old neighborhood.

I slumbered in ash, conformed

to the ashman’s wagon

as it trailed the morning fog

past our stoop all winter.

Heard the city sparrows cry

hunger over the tarred housetops,

third-shifters fumble for their keys,

first bayings from the slaughterhouse.

You ordered the sun up at last

over the foundry’s pouring smokestack.

Window frost melted the past.

And I rose up, as you see, singing.