united person, yet
dividing each alone.
Frail bridges cross from eye
to eye, from flesh to flesh,
from word to word: the net
is gapped at every mesh,
and this each human knows:
however close our touch
or intimate our speech,
silences, spaces reach
most deep, and will not close.
Similar Posts
Having known war and peace
I drink my coffee and waitfor the sun to rise,With kitchen swept, cat fed,the day will quiet,I taste my fifty yearshere in the cup.Outside the green birds comefor bread and water.Their wings wait for the sunto show their colours.I’ll show my colours too.Though we’ve pollutedeven this air I breatheAnd spoiled green earth;though, granted life or…
The day was clear as fire,
when thirsty I came to the creekand fell by its side in the grass.My breast on the bright mossand shower-embroidered weeks,my lips to the live waterI saw him turn in the reeds.Black horror sprang from the darkin a violent birth,and through its cloth of grassI felt the clutch of earth.O beat him into the ground.O…
He thrust his joy against the weight of the sea;
foam–(hawthorn hedges in spring, thorns in the face stinging).How his brown strength drove through the hollow and coilof green-through weirs of water!Muscle of arm thrust down long muscle of water;and swimming so, went out of sightwhere mortal, masterful, frail, the gulls went wheelingin air as he in water, with delight.Turn home, the sun goes down;…
This is not I. I had no body once-
and stare at stars and tentatively danceon the fringe of foam and wave and sand and sun.Eyes loved, hands reached for me, but I was goneon my own currents, quicksilver, thistledown.Can I be trapped at last in that soft face?I stare at you in fear, dark brimming eyes.Why do you watch me with that immoderate…
Under the death of winter’s leaves he lies
to be his home and bread. ‘O take from methe weight and waterfall ceaseless Timethat batters down my weakness; the knives of lightwhose thrust I cannot turn; the crueltyof human eyes that dare not touch nor pity.’Under the worn leaves of the winter citysafe in the house of Nothing now he lies.His white and burning…
I saw our golden years on a black gale,
‘O we are winter-caught, and we must fail,’said the dark dream, ‘and time is overcast.’-And woke into the night; but you were there,and small as seed in the wild dark we lay.Small as seed under the gulfs of airis set the stubborn heart that waits for day.I saw our love the root that holds the…