What did you first think of darkness?  How swiftly
it extinguished your nursery room totems.  Animals
and mobiles returned to the riverbed of night,
flickering black and white.

When lightning scuttled quick about the room
its murmur and hiss vanishing into corners,
did it snatch your soul in mandibles and
suck it like an oyster?

The slow ascendence of the kingdom of sound
marched upon you, companion to the night.
Clock tick, branch scratch, hard wind.
Frantic overturnings

and a scuffle for mother's dove wing, until
a voice, what you searched for, without knowing,
a convict in the yard, a can-picker in the alley, sang, calling
from the other shore.

Joshua, when you go across the water
recall the streets I showed you, recall how Mercury
rises above Grand Central.  Workmen wiped clean the stars for you.

when you go across the water.