It's dark under the knife.
It's cold and it's lonely.
Time passes by without a word,
without a suggestion.
Without question.

The knife is a number greater than one.
A letter. A pill under your tongue.
Beneath its polished stone I go,
on a plain, along a plane of snow.
Red snow.

It's dark under the knife.
Light bends backwards.
There's a wind that's sharp as scarlet,
a moon with an edge, a burnished cliff-edge.
Slash, sings the knife blade. Slit and slice.
Ice cut from ice.
Do we not all fall just short of savage?

Under the knife is a river of blood.
Of love. Of mud.
Under the knife is a city in starlight,
life cleaving from life,
night parted from night.

What you hear
in your ear is the song of the midwife.
A bell is ringing and death is singing:
It's dark under the knife.