Suddenly you feel it, under the white heat
of afternoon, how far the body has to travel,
knowing that the lives that have been wasted
will impact on everyone.
The light here has begun to pass
and what we mistook for death
is only the long struggle to the surface,
the gymnastics of everyday living
and we arrive in a familiar place
with nothing at its centre
except guilt, the wound that never heals,
scarring the bare coils of our brains.
observing the bewitched leave park benches
to make their way, belongings plied on push carts,
my fingers tense on my belongings.
The infinitely secret world, inaudible,
un-embraceable, extends its borderless zones.
Like freedom I live without a future.
That sweet pain with which we touched each other
that surrender to which there is no end
is transformed into the body's desire
for acceptance, a caress, when we clasped
each other in the hunger for love.
Tomorrow the sun will roll through the sky
and its delicate filigree, while
chilling the body, will calm the mind.
I pass through the streets of my city,
and yours; then I enter sleep
and the winged transit of night.
The before-snow sky lasted like a perpetual twilight
as they wrote their last letters.
Down a road outside town she remembered
silhouette trees and every silhouette giving in.
They were tired of being on support.
This is the police, bellowed the police,
stumbling forward, breaking locks
in their haste to reach the couple.
Even in death they had a faintly greasy,
slippery look, blue around the lips
as though they'd sipped from
the ink, spilled and pooling on the floor.