Bill Knott (1940 - / Carson City, Michigan)

-to S.

The light lay in shreds across the bed,
only your waking could make it whole;
resuming its costume of day, its role
which seems to overnight get ragged—

Fate latent as weights in theater
curtainhems, what soul is sewn here
to be rung down at last, divested
of these disguises. But if we are

bared by such cloth as cries in this
lament for the sun's fragility,
would I dare now to shake you astir—

to drape over you my shadow, whose
myth-ex-machina remains all mine,
mine, and therefore torn from yours.