The children run away, they hide,
teasing the twilight on the leaves,
they scatter under shadows, their eyes
blink out, their voices vanish.
She follows and calls them in to sleep,
her cry impatient, but hears itself,
astonished, flirts alone, succumbs, desires
labor, desires a companion solitude,
and rises to compel the listening stars.
 
Toward her the stars send forth their night
— prince, husband, stranger, death —
bearer of the dark illustrious names.
He overtakes her in the wood.
She is startled by the dark pursuit,
a brilliance fallen too close.
Having come so far tonight,
leaping over all the ways,
dropping toward sleep, he draws
his darkness from the sky to light
within the empty heavens of her flesh
the lost inviolable stars.