Time is a fire as tired as a tunnel and as tired
as a verb. Doris feels filled at night with
a bitter mustard. She has given and got as hard
as the rest, a princess of chafe, a sorcerer
of sore and apprentice to fault. She has winked
while the moon rolled its sour eye.

Damn it, she wants hope like everyone else does,
to peek corners, dream calls. She’s ticklish with want.
But at night she is filled with a bitter juice that goes
through her like a cold silver pole, a high silver wind.
It is keen, and she is keen on it. It’s gulped down her tubes
like a vinegar joke. Wasting goes through, hurt does,
waste.

All along her outsides, time is a fire, a lonely light
spent so fast it makes her sick. The watch

kept on cutting time
with its little saw,

Neruda said. I know the skin of the earth
and I know it has no name,

Neruda said. And Ravikovich:
This too will be a part that gets farther
and farther away.