5a.m.

grey sky frozen
and there's beauty
in the smoke-stacking chimney that billows
from the hospital furnace
where souls of stillborn babies
rise to rejoin the Universe
and cold streets awash with rats and windbitten faces
that would smile at me if they could.
this conquered city, making tired love
blessed and empty with litter
like the pages of a book
I dare not dream
where the dawn is a darkening day,
and a memory erased out of need
crawling from the shadows of itself