The daylight circled overhead
And grew, and rose, to shadows;
The world of grand iniquity
Lay just outside the line

The clouds of human madness, for
Which there exist no aloes
To balm the sting of carelessness,
Or loathing, over time

But there was us, and our regard:
Our carnal separation —
Which soon enough, we’d end, and shed
The articles between

For rampant though the evil be,
We must find sense in something;
And we found sense in all our senses
Spent behind a screen

For where there’s no analysis
There still is strength in blending,
In fingertips and arching reach
And sweat upon the head

The clouds had gathered overhead,
And far, October lightning —
And all that we could, we did,
Upon a spinning bed

The going day had turned to stop,
And night grew in indenture;
The fleeting hope we grew upon
Lay flat and cold and dead —

Of all the lessons we had learned,
This one had come the latest:
When hearts are desperate empty,
We’ll fill other things
Instead