What is the answer
To that ancient problem?
Rain against glass,

The gutter’s low-
throated street song;
listen.

*
Every evening, he could measure progress
by the packed snow collected
under his boot-soles.

Finally, he unlaced them, loosening
stiff leather to stark flesh,
accepting the cold.

*
Razor slip- the water clouding red
like a prophecy; he traces the torn skin,
recognising himself in the mirror.

Conclusion follows question, indistinctly;
at the door, she shares the wound
like an old master.

*

In the house of words
he had assembled,
he wrote the sign

for ‘permanence’
as the house
trembled.

*

Starlings clustered
against the pier’s taut
skeleton,

the sea grinding shoreward,
its salt-tang resumed like a vow;
all one movement.

Bio: Daniel Williams is a poet and writer, and founding editor of Long Exposure Magazine.