after Baudelaire’s "Recuillement"
Sorrow, keep calm.
Evening—you asked for it—has come.
Darkening streets (depending who you are)
bring peace, or fear.
While party-goers, hectic, head
for their own idiot after-misery,
take my hand.
Come with me.
See how, in tatters, the gone
years lean down;
from the river, smiling, Regret
rises. Below a bridge, the tired sun sets,
and—trailing a foggy shroud, my dear, with light
steps (Listen!): Night.