"When I was half the age I am,"
said the middle-aged man in a borrowed voice,
"I dreamed no future, I held no past,
I froze in a present bright as ice.
    Now listen to me."
 
"If I was as big as they were then,"
said the boy-child wearing his father's face,
"no one would bruise, no one would blister,
no one would burn down anyone's house.
    Couldn't they see?"
 
The old man is a bundle of clothes,
false teeth, bifocals. Empty shoes.
"When and if," the lost son said,
in the hard dry light, to the creaking crows.
    "Where, oh where am I?"