There is a sound I hear
at night, when the others are sleeping;

nothing to do with me,
I’m fairly sure,

an animal thing, the remnant
of a haunting

or, possibly,
a call from something

buried in the masonry that
seeks but does not find

an audible response,
though voices flock

like starlings in the hollow
roofspace, lost

to all the parts of speech
that we declined.