PART THREE

 

DUALITY

So God created man in his

own image, in the image of God

created he him; male and female

created he them.

I

To love is to suffer—did I

know this when first

I asked you for your love?

I did not. And yet until

I knew, I could not know what

I asked, or gave. I gave

a suffering that I took: yours

and mine, mine when yours;

and yours I have feared most.

II

What can bring us past

this knowledge, so that you

will never wish our life

undone? For if ever you

wish it so, then I must wish

so too, and lovers yet unborn,

whom we are reaching toward

with love, will turn to this

page, and find it blank.

III

I have feared to be unknown

and to offend—I must speak,

then, against the dread

of speech. What if, hearing,

you have no reply, and mind’s

despair annul the body’s hope?

Life in time may justify

any conclusion, whenever

our will is to conclude.

IV

Look at me now. Now,

after all the years, look at me

who have no beauty apart

from what we two have made

and been. Look at me

with the look that anger

and pain have taught you,

the gaze in which nothing

is guarded, nothing withheld.

V

You look at me, you give

a light, which I bear and return,

and we are held, and all

our time is held, in this

touching look—this touch

that, pressed against the touch

returning in the dark,

is almost sight. We burn

and see by our own light.

VI

Eyes looking into eyes looking

into eyes, touches that see

in the dark, remember Paradise,

our true home. God’s image

recalls us to Itself. We move

with motion not our own,

light upon light, day and

night, sway as two trees

in the same wind sway.

VII

Let us come to no conclusion,

but let our bodies burn

in time’s timelessness. Heaven

and earth give us to this night

in which we tell each other of

a Kingdom yet to come, saying

its secret, its silent names.

We become fleshed words, one

another’s uttered joy.

VIII

Joined in our mortal time,

we come to the resurrection

of words; they rise up

in our mouths, set free

of taints, errors, and bad luck.

In their new clarities

the leaf brightens, the air

clears, the syllables of water are

clear in the dark air as stars.

IX

We come, unsighted, in the dark,

to the great feast of lovers

where nothing is withheld.

That we are there we know

by touch, by inner sight.

They all are here, who by

their giving take, by taking

give, who by their living

love, and by loving live.