The Silence

As I close my eyes, I can see
the village and its plan, askant
my line of vision. Tilt this, one melts
to its plan; lift, the village is
in one piece, its existence
from limestone, its diagram a street
in which no car can pass
another. A donkey’s ambling width.

As I pass, their stare catches me
by the shoulder, their shadows gone still
as a lizard in flight changes
the lines of its short, tailless life
into a radiating mass of lines waving
frail limbs and feet in stone.
All stone cracks, all
cracks are lizards. No sawn blocks
but rock scooped, as a natural
prison is. No grass, or tree
through which a bee treads
its shadow, counterfeit
of self, over the leaf blades.
Man, animal and woman stand
stripped of shadow among the stone;
its pargeting
flaky as a blister dried to its face.
I stare at my palms, their milky
abrasions, the pale veins
in the wrist, the whitened
character and life-lines.