Henry Hall

---

Only Shorter
…and die one day like any other day, only shorter” —Samuel Beckett

Dawn’s cool milk, dusk’s sultry stew,
and in between, the roar of work
and traffic jams for armored me and you.

The daytime rigor’s harsh and stark,             
but worse is the beam of naked night,
when the dead revisit, strange familiars,

in clothes and faces of decades past.
But fugitive, their slipping in so late;
the dreamer too will die; the world forebears

of them just this little while I last.
The earth is round, but life is flat;
over the edge we go, and that’s that.

---

  Henry Hall

Henry Hall lives in Boston. His interests include the history of the blues, and the blues of history.