to where

Wearing a tawny lion pelt upon

My spindly shoulders I carry both of them,

My father and my mother, into the darkness,

My father hoarsely singing, “They are there!”

—The glimmer of something that is glimmering there—

“I see the glow of weapons in the shadows!”

Through which with my purblind eyes I think I see

Something in the darkness waiting there.

Above me in the dark my mother’s voice

Calls down to me, “Who’s there? Who is it there?”

Step after step together we make our way,

In the darkness of my memory of our house.