HIGHWAYMAN

That mask; this dark intricate familiar wrapped
Round your face like a cat: night has fallen and
Drawn his cloak about you. There, as here,

The double machine bolts, but just how far

And on which road - hard to tell. Pointing

Up towards the moonlight, your native landscape

Bursting with totality, your silhouette conjuring up and

Waging war: Stand and deliver: and although in the night

You embark on work, in fact you do not work at all. 

We meet: we secretly pass on under the flaring unstable

Planets, through gates and into a different country: light

Flowing from the sky like streaming mucous uncolouring

The bone beneath the soft turf; you hear his hooves,

This dark intricate familiar: that mask.