Anne Clark - Cane Hill

Here
Upon these ghostly shadows
Of men and women
There are no smiles
Singly
They mingle
With the greyness of the walls
And at strange angels
They travel on
To nowhere
Each a nucleus
Of sadness and despair
Small
Or no conversation
Passes their cigarette-stained lips
They sit
The lonely ones
Sitting eternally
In institutions
That have become their eyes
That have become their arms
Their legs
They are empty now
Just shells moving back and forth
Upon a shore
Of some uncharted beach
Up steep green hills
They linger
Like the darknest thoughts
That push them selves
Into your mind
You cannot question them
For they will not answer you
They
Are our deepest fears