poetry month day 30

This one is stolen from laiqualaurelote.

Ghazal of Winter

for C

Outside the homeless ask our help in all their languages;
The words disperse like witches' ashes.

Your nights are filled with arsonists and lonely politicians,
Charred cities drowned in posters like curling skin.

What will survive of this is words and stardust.
At customs they found nothing hidden in the bronze god.

Six seeds can trap the underworld's season.
Ignorant of spring, the snowflakes kiss and pass.

Each morning brings two sets of dreams, the summoned and the lost.
Every other space I learn to halve with you

As days slide away like streetcars
Along steel networks planned by neither of us.

- Teng Qianxi