In the Absence of Clocks

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51 Untitled This is all there is— a sky of flint and steel. Lying on their backs, they talk too loud, say that peels of palm bark are locks of the girl’s hair. That Saturn must hulk over its empire of moons. She asks again about his father’s health, his quiet sermon on forgetting. In this way it is easy to say nothing new, leave their revolutions untended. She says that tonight she’d rather sleep in a bed with her sister, in her father’s old room. Some evenings, smog and rain will mix, burnish the machines of the sky, a tremendous blaze of orange. As she leaves— a sky of flint and steel. ...