[W T Clark]

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Rev.1

The faces come when day goes off outside our glass.
We squirm from sleep to meet them: pressed wet-eyed to glass.

At first we paid them no attention, washing, hunting:
kept to the black work we plied in the glass.

But we'd rise from ourselves to see them: testing the walls
which edge their cage of nothing that side of glass.

They're here to teach us pity in the dark: & we pity
their fallen world past our divide of glass.

What hunts them, in that air? & if they were admitted
we'd teach them love: the coil & hide of glass.

We watch their watching: pinched eyes, predisposed to fix,
like the white days we've defied through sleep & glass.

Why do their eyes still follow us if not to glimpse
the life that's been denied them by our glass?

Yet there are those of us who claim we need them, that this
kingdom of eyes has sanctified our glass,

that all of us & our housed lives are nothing
but the lives their stares confide to glass.

***
The faces come when day goes off outside our glass.
We squirm from sleep to meet them: pressed wet-eyed to glass.

We think they must be some exhibit: testing the walls
which edge their cage of nothing that side of glass.

They're here to teach us pity in the dark: & we pity
their fallen world passed our devide of glass.

Why do their eyes still follow us if not to glimpse
the life that's been denied them by our glass?

What hunts them, in that air? & if they were admitted
we'd teach them love: the coil & hide of glasss.

We watch their watching: pinched eyes, predisposed to fix,
like the white days we've defied through sleep & glass.

Yet there are those of us who claim we need them, that this
kingdom of eyes has sanctified our glass,

& our black work — our hunting, washing, gazing lives —
are but* the lives their stares confide in glass.


***just the lives?
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