The knowledge of anguish; the anguish of knowledge. |
A poem called The Words I Know Came to talk to me today. I knew him by the flakes of snow That glistened in his locks of hay. Maple keys and shattered glass And bolts of water were his coat. His shoes were books I breathed like gas. His gloves were thoughts I never wrote. He walked with wind; he knelt and rain Spilled from his pocket on my shoe. His smile was my secret pain. His eyes were everyone I knew. And pumping through transparent skin The first word of my infancy, The word I cannot know again, His heart he will not give to me, Resounded like a midnight plunge Through ice and through the afterglow. Around his neck Golgotha’s sponge To ease the things I had to know Of terror and of shock and awe, Of sea and sand’s insurgency On lines men draw, the tragic flaw, And the far side of adversity, The wings of dragons and of doves Within a single locket held, The secret testament of love, And the weight of all the world. Epiphany and paradox. Dust and inspiration. The shadow when adventure knocks, And its seismic transformation. And guilt grew closer than my skin. And sorrow vital as my bones To see him look at me again More stricken and more overgrown. I hadn’t thought myself unscathed; I’d not believed myself immune To seeing dreams arranged in graves. But the shadow met my gaze so soon. Who had moved the other so? Are you changed by me or I by you? One answered- which, I do not know. “I could not stop if you asked me to.” |