Scraping from the bench
Silver till it becomes
A quivering kidney, black
Under his thin thumbs,
The young apprentice thinks:
‘How hot the sun will get?
When earth and rocks like this
Are liquid but not wet,
What will have happened to me,
Who am the only one?’
He weeps, and a dumb wind
Blows in from Asia, un-
-kempt as a messenger:
It slams the door and moans,
And the fingers work faster
At the end of his long bones.