He - the newly free, the wanderer of the earth,
finding every town walled up against him,
encountering nothing human - no love, no mirth -
but pursuing his odd desire where it sends him.
He cowers in the dusk from beasts of prey
whose howls intermingle with those of desert sands
and beholds in the merest dawn the merest blight.
He sees in the townspeople's spectral sway
a community recollected in their bands
which fade before a day less day than night is night.
He escapes by way of a piercing lure,
returned to his central self by a crowing cock,
and ponders as he sits up on his stretch of rock
how the day can present a face so pure
between, behind and beneath the strokes of the clock.
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