It Is Night in My Study

It is night in my study. Alone, I hear the steady agitation in my chest, as if thought had turned the heart to soot. And I hear my blood with its thrumming undercurrent seep into my quiet study the way water used to measure time by filling the base of the water clock. Here, at night, alone, this is my study, the books mute. The lamp rinses my sheet of paper with light. All those who write, who meditate, or study— their souls doze inside them; and now, all around me, I can feel some alert thing circling, once or twice, a vagrant shadow among the other shadows. Heart, soot, water, blood, clock. How many more years have passed since turning forty? Here, alone, with no sound,