The Hollow Veil

I am a cellar wall, and I hold fast
what rolled down here: potatoes, glue, and wine,
coal, barrels, then two hundred years of past,
and freshest, one man's shoulder. It is mine.

Three nights ago a hand went into him
and emptied him, and left in me its cold:
a flat, square patience, nothing wild or grim.
It had no hunger. That's the part I hold.

A tall man crouched and laid on me his palm.
I told him all: the key, the step, the rest.
He let his breath go, long and slow and calm,
and I, like water, took him in, to the chest.

His dog lay on his boots through every night
and ruled the rats, and never caught a one.
That night the dog was elsewhere, out of sight:
the one thing spared, before the thing was done.

He took his palm away and climbed the stair,
collar turned up, to meet the coming rain,
and hunt the hand that emptied him. The air
closed on the print he left, and I remain.

A wall can't weep. A wall can only keep.
I keep the pressed-in cold, the key's slow turn,
the shoulder, and a dog's unbroken sleep
on boots, a debt of warmth I cannot earn.