Before the last ending of autumn,
A startled cry from inside
Seemed like a mind in its sound.
I knew only what I had heard,
A baby’s cry, at midnight or after,
Above the late November wind.
The moon was rising at two,
Once a crumpled mask above dead leaves . . .
It could not be inside.
Not from the chiaroscuro
Of sleep’s faded paper sky . . .
The moon wasn’t coming inside.
That startled cry—it was
A tone whose song preceded tuning.
It was nothing like the old moon,
Surrounded by its echoic tone
Being right here. It was what
I’ve always known to be real.