mountain a wimple starched folds
birds the black page turning
the message folded and unfolded
in that turning of the page
inside out, in that scarf
of shadow, in that message
passing
you wanted death to give
not only take from us
not will, not desire:
perhaps prayer
not still:
held
at the end you said:
I want to keep my eyes open,
to miss nothing
not entreaty, not regret
not future, not past:
touch and warm weight
breath and again:
what word can be heard
not loss, not absence:
perhaps soul
not inside, not outside:
dusk’s doorway
not alone
I could almost not bear to leave
your islands at the framer
so precious that paper
the work of your hands
you chose (3/4 inch) frames, (anti-fade) glass,
we wondered which wall might
hold them all, wooden frames and
glassy sea so heavy I could barely carry
the dusk silence an n-manifold, cornerless
the length of you along the cliff,
the (Somerset soft white) page
of the bed, the black sea
soaking our sight
with its endless reappearance
the joining of souls seaward
1
When she returned, a few weeks later, the café was gone.
Yet that summer evening, a crowd of souls had been laughing and drinking. The story of his past was the story of her future, the child he lost, the child she was carrying.
In the café, the train hurtled toward the switch and in a moment they were looking at each other, one looking forward, the other looking back.
2
She opened the magazine and saw his face. She did not know his name. She had never seen him before, yet who she saw was so familiar, she wept. It was as if a stroke, an aneurysm had removed the crucial memory, yet she felt they belonged to each other with all the force of that loss.
3
Kentish Town. No time to lose, preoccupied. She was walking toward him on the other side of the street. They passed each other. Halfway down the block each turned at the same moment and looked back. He had never believed in it, and there he stood, bullied by fate into belief.
In the taberna with friends, his back to the door. He had lived five years in Madrid. Without turning, he felt her come through the doorway. Without turning, he felt the inaudible flame rush through his life, incinerating everything that had come before. The rough scratch of a friction match – “strike anywhere” – on the side of the box.
5
It was not the iron tongue that rings in the waves, tolling its warning in the shifting sea. It was the bell on Sunday morning that woke you in a hotel room in Paris after arriving late at night, unaware you were sleeping so close to a church.
-
a single stitch
the life entire
path
broken path
furrow
long vowel
love’s dare
love’s repair
love’s patience
love’s acquiescence
love’s indignation
love’s silence
you looked at the sea
the pencil’s line
the poem’s line
the typewriter ribbon worn through
on Greene Street
meniscus
horizon
seam between
the dash at the end of phrase, meaning
not yet, meaning
to
continue