Penumbra

In the transformations of sight,
What once was gray turns violet,
A trick literally of the light,
Turned between the eye and memory,
From hard fact to perception,
To a noisy, fuzzy non-colour,
Like a half-heard sob of grief,
Caught behind a TV interview,
In the grimy crowd of relatives,
Scanning manifest and cargo,
For signs of the lost and drowned,
Until it seems all worlds and time,
Are concentrated in a single howl,
For the whole collapsing structure,
A cataract of masonry and faith,
Raising clouds across the city,
And emplacements in the mind,
To set positions and futures,
The digging of new trenches,
And the drawing of new lines.