“after Neruda

a bronze song, something undone, salvia,
a crushed butterfly.
It is the blood on a light bulb, the seventh sadness,
a fluctuation that closes oceans and eyes.
The vermilion and solitary luminary
shimmies and singes the feathers of the aviary.

Moon, the clock’s word, dear mother, ruin, rain.

— Simone Muench, “Elegy for the Unsaid,” Lampblack & Ash: Poems. (Sarabande Books; First Edition edition November 1, 2005)”