For Leonard Cohen in Chelsea Hotel

Something wakes inside a numbered lock.
The hands move over banks of wire and tooth;
each breath a calculation, each slow knock
a pulse, a breach the cipher opens through:
the cold thing at the center turns and turns—
a dark fidelity, a mouth that takes
what enters there, gives nothing back, but churns
the husk to signal till the body shakes—
a secret comes up through the floor in waves:
the vessel holds it, shows the way a jaw
unhinges in the dark, the way it splays
a signal turning red, the panel raw
as punctures driven into skin.
But that is where the light gets in.