There’s some archetypal shite going on in here. That’s what I would say if someone interviewed me about this poem (at which point, I expect the interview would end).

The Old Man, the Woman, the Black House

I saw the old man and wept,
not for him, of course, but
for the dark blossoms of pain
that appeared on her lips,
the woman he kept in the back
of the Moon Room, her hair
black as coal, her eyes deep
as wells, her breathing in time
with the ocean waves that rolled
in thousands of miles away.

We couldn’t escape, and he didn’t
care one way or the other, locked
in his prayers, his whiskered ways,
unsure of everything except the bald
answers he sought from a dead god.
Hold on, I told her, urging a different
kind of faith, one rooted in the possibility
that we could walk hand in hand from
the black house and find our way again.
Soon, I whispered to us both. Soon now.