The Heart of Green The party sealed behind sliding glass The music seems to start to sink into the past The warm summer night The gardens catch the party's cast-off light The bored replies of haughty girls Are whispers of a vanished world The contour that disturbed a satin sheen ... So why this ache at the heart of green? But beyond the trees Can you hear the sound of the waves? The night creatures flit through the dark And the moon is the fist of judgment And the moonlight across the water Is a reprieve An afternoon of uniform light No shadows at your feet, the sky a milky white You have to slit your eyes But nothing dazzles under milk-white skies And green is just another fact Like how your shirt sticks to your back Or how the bookshelves fill with the unchecked Permuting of a single symbol set But their senses stripped Symbols move like counters in a game The horizon forever recedes But the moment the pattern flickers Is like the last weary step that vaults you Into the sky An afternoon of uniform light ... and suddenly it seems I've lost the will to fight The bright, unblinking screen Even desperation grown routine The days receding, all the same Like the links of an iron chain That disappears beneath us in the murk And drags us downward, jerk by jerk ... I will rise and go And the scales fall from me as I move I'll go where the river grows wide And I'll watch sunlight fleck the water And the wind stir the leaves above me The heart of green ...