We are naming the birds, and to what use: Under the ice of the inlet a skeleton swims with eyes wide open; at the cemetery the prematurely dead lie eating themselves. It is winter, and a bare tree scrapes with its branches on the fire door of the grey sky.

While you sleep, the conscious world is cut out of the universe with crooked scissors. Then you see like an animal again, remember with the body: the shadows that rock the children in their long, thin arms; a stretch of highway that’s deserted. If the sleep is deep enough, the soul sneaks into the bedroom and lies down a few hours beside your body: the way a betrayed woman puts her arms, cautiously, around her sleeping lover.

The sun lounges in dreamless sleep, the eyes shut, the back in shreds of darkness. It is that night before spring, and in a few hours, when a ribbon of smoke rises from a crack in the ground, the rain will come and the tree roots will begin to loosen their grip on the frost. It is a bit like in the old days: The earth will be set in motion by a winch that stands on a ship whose hull is welded together with stars. For the same reason, there are handles on the clouds so they can be carried out to sea and, once there, become themselves again.

I took you home with me, here by the harbour, where the fish are poisoned now. Even the widows belch between sentences because of it. Like snow falls through the darkness under streetlights, we fell through each other, and when we woke up this morning, our spines had grown together, so we had to crawl out of bed as a single, huge insect.