When You Go Away

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north The
painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls Showing the
black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes
In one breath I wake
It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be Like
the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy