"without a word without a breath"

All

All the beautiful women in my life

were called Sadie or Sadist I forget

the color of that flower also its name

now that you ask

where I have been these past few months

between the solstice and the total eclipse

of all that we once had known

or thought mistakenly to know.

Perhaps the snow blinded us

or we gazed too long at the startled sun

forgetting our strict instructions

like so many others

who had assembled there for the event

that came and went

without a word without a breath

while the dancers so young filled the streets

and the fields with a sort of silent song

thinking they could go on and on.

-- Michael Palmer, Little Elegies for Sister Satan