those dumb and paralysed
executants of pantomime
never remember the memory
which suppresses

they are silver performers of
disturbance and darkened light,
counterfeit tableaux of putrefaction;
not dead but made to conform
to the state of the fog

their words are condensed,
displaced; a kind of refuse lost
to the inside of their heads

this unlikely encounter
another oxymoron of the
cramped protection of strange
situations, the gray marriage
of numbers and a mute
and crippled collapse