hating the morning

in the grey light when shadows merge with walls
comes now the shaper of the fullest days
emboldened now to take the longest ways
around the streets and by the market-stalls
not here or now the long and marbled halls
where troubadours on lutes sang their old lays
or places where the watcher shouted praise
of the returning lords such matter never palls
but here and now the weak and wintry light
uncovers nothing more than what it hides
and gives us each a sense of what we've lost
not here or now the shock of sudden sight
of what is coming soon and on what sides
each of us will fight and at what hidden cost