Setting the Night Edition

The compositor works after the presses cool.

Lead is patient; the alphabet, a drawer of weights.

She lifts each letter as one lifts a word

too true to say aloud at any speed.

A comma is a held breath set in metal.

The margin is not empty — it is listening.

Ink will remember what the hand let go,

and morning will arrive already printed.

So she leaves a line unset, a white space wide

enough for the reader's own slow thought to dry —

then locks the forme, and turns the lamp down low.