The Pale of Settlement (Revision)

~ for Louise Nevelson

A colorless guilt
This self-fashioned light

Of the shipyards shore grey
Beardless presence

Of an after

Math after

An aftermath

Wood assumes
Number to not forget

This distance

Beyond the pale of settlement
& into

The arms of this shadow now
We sing a world uncolored

Of those pograms
A more immediate Kiev

They destroy destroy again
For the 29th

Time to ruin
Ruins affix stack

This not world

Variations on seen things seen

Words and wood
What definition of the present

To measure slivers
Through the city scraping

The eye

Fresh it seemed pure conscience, pure

Sense pirched on rocks for thousands
Of years we stand

In this night-
mare counting shadows

as they fall from earth.