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The moon-turned pages of the sea read, The Ides of White.
Calends, candles, thumbed-over and piling old white,
the year keepsake-old, the sea an anachronism,
old before it reaches the shore, grizzled, pale.
The tide stands for the calendar, the moon the letter “C.”
It’s in code. “Conclude.” Prepare the time you put away,
don’t be rushed if it’s raining hours and days,
wrap the year in white, it’s time-resistant.
White is a relic itself, an idea left over from bone.
Bone and white rhyme like white and time rhyme,
like Monday from moon, like month from moon.
November is after ten months, December after eleven.
Each day fainter now before it reaches us,
come the whole distance through the year
which tangles like a moon in a tree, waning.
Tidings, idings, time never tires of passing.
The chased sky is string-frail and could blow away.
The night is antique, the year is a refrain.
It’s time for something to be over is the song,
the wind taps for agreement with its accustomed baton,
let the sea end here, let the land, the year.
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