The Manifestations of the Voyage

my house’s stairway is seized
with vertigo.
Matter having forsaken its laws,
we land in hell,
ascending to heaven.

*

Shadows move along ladders
under the silence of ordinary things
there is another silence:
it belongs neither to the leaves nor to the
dead

with a crown of birds circling
him
a child is running in an abandoned
house
the stairway takes the measure of
its own emptiness

I myself am the stairway that
Time has used in its
funeral course