No One Came In

The screens are ash The voice is gone The roads hold cars Half-open doors The houses kept Their little light Too long beneath That patient height I walk through glass And cooling rain The sort that starts After the flame No orders now No final hymn Just rooms that stayed As people dimmed No one came in Not when they called Not when the sky bent down And took the light from all No one came in They watched, they stayed And every spent instruction Left them where the dark was made Some stood in gardens with their dressing gowns Some watched from traffic held beneath the red Some laughed and said they'd wait for confirmation As something vast went breathing overhead Some meant to move Some meant to pack Some thought there still Would be a track From briefing room To ordered queue From phrase to fact From word to true No one came in Not in time The old advice lay on the tongue Like rust or pantomime No one came in Not when it meant The warning reached the city But the power in it had been spent There is no joy in being right too late No laurel for the man who named the flood No clean revenge against the smiling briefings Only the fact that none of it did good No one came in And now I keep A silence wider than the roads And deeper than the sleep No one came in The signal died Long before the first descent Unstitched the lawful sky When the sky meant it No one came in When the sky meant it No one