KRISTIN BOCK
AFTERHOURS INSIDE THE MUSEUM
Even the air is a work of art and remembers
the ten thousand breaths that have passed in dark
corridors, where sculptures wake to endure their designs:
A nude bather climbs a slippery cliffside.
Tonight is the night she will not think
Heaven never spoke to me, not once.
In a shallow grave he dug with his boot,
a soldier, once again, lies down in the sand
to wait for the sky to open.
A headless torso sprouts six wings of fire,
her head, buried somewhere in Athens,
opens its heavy eyelids in the black earth.
And the night watchman sits motionless all night
dreaming of wild ponies, dark eyed and stranded
in the eye of a storm fated to twist itself to death.
