Poems - 9. Alfredo II

Alfredo--nightly, I have been troubled by a vision
Of ash and brown earth
Pillared into the distant shape of a chimney,
A pale finger from the cold dirt. Tell me, Alfredo,
Why does the dream haunt me nightly,
And why, when the gulls come in
Over my imagining's forlorn shapes,
Do they wheel in silence, as if black crows
Over the ancestral bodies of the dead?
Tell me, Alfredo, why you are in the dream,
A pale shape beside me, together
Watching an old and toothless woman mutter songs
To a baby that does not cry,
But only lifts its arms before a cold grate,
Perhaps to touch the ancient stonework, whitened
By ash and age?
Alfredo, do the leaves outside still fall?