They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they’d never met before, they’re sure
that there’d been nothing between them.
But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways—
perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times?

I want to ask them
if they don’t remember—
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd?
a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?—
but I know the answer.
No, they don’t remember.

They’d be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.

Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn’t read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood’s thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

A butterfly dancing in the sunlight, 
A bird singing to his mate, 
The whispering pines, 
The restless sea, 
The gigantic mountains, 
A stately tree,
The rain upon the roof, 
The sun at early dawn,
A boy with rod and hook,
The babble of a shady brook, 
A woman with her smiling babe, 
A man whose eyes are kind and wise, 
Youth that is eager and unafraid—
When all is said, I do love best
A little home where love abides, 
And where there’s kindness, peace, and rest.

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   ‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.’

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on.

Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
     And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
     When love beckons to you, follow him,
     Though his ways are hard and steep.
     And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
     Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
     And when he speaks to you believe in him,
     Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

     For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
     Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
     So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
     Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself
     He threshes you to make your naked.
     He sifts you to free you from your husks.
     He grinds you to whiteness.
     He kneads you until you are pliant;
     And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

     All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

     But if in your heart you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
     Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
     Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
     Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
     Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
     For love is sufficient unto love.

     When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”
     And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

     Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
     But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
     To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
     To know the pain of too much tenderness.
     To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
     And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
     To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
     To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
     To return home at eventide with gratitude;
     And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

I do not care for sleep, I’ll wait awhile 
For Love to come out of the darkness, wait
For laughter, gifted with the frequent fate
Of dusk-lit hope, to touch me with the smile 
Of moon and star and joy of that last mile 
Before I reach the sea. The ships are late
And mayhap laden with the precious freight
Dawn brings from Life’s eternal summer isle.

And should I find the sweeter fruits of dream—
The oranges of love and mating song—
I’ll laugh so true the morn will gayly seem 
Endless and ships full laden with a throng 
Of beauty, dreams and loves will come to me 
Out of the surge of yonder silver sea.

One can find only peace in the sea.

I don’t agree. I think of migrants when I hear the sea. Is my anger justified?
A window, not eyes, overpours. Love of the world. Lonely and often fooled.
Occupied by health insurance and visas. Please, please recover. I thought I’d healed
her death but here I am, waiting.

Sink into memory of happy and together, which is a self looking back and taking
out of context the bright feelings.

Move forward into embrace. Loneliness moving with.
I was thinking of you (the word) and how it accompanies. But how too it can imply
distance—moments behind the eyes, fading planets, how people hold differently
the changing sentences and truths of being.

How in my late 20s I planned on traveling to a lover in another country but realized
the night before, my passport had already expired. I couldn’t take the pain of the
border, the disclosure of not being a citizen. Of being so in love I would have risked
detainment.

Something close to 2 p.m. now but really it’s later in some place I’ve never been.

I cautious scanned my little life,
I winnowed what would fade
From what would last till heads like mine
Should be a-dreaming laid.

I put the latter in a barn,
The former blew away —
I went one winter morning,
And lo! my priceless hay

Was not upon the “‘scaffold”’,
Was not upon the “beam”,
And from a thriving farmer 
A cynic I became.

Whether a thief did it —
Whether it was the wind —
Whether Deity ’s guiltless
My business is to find.

So I begin to ransack —
How is it, Heart, with thee?
Art thou within the little barn
Love provided thee?

Thank God, I glory in thy love, and mine!
   And if they win a warm blush to my cheek,
It is not shame—it is a joy divine,
   That only there its wild bright life may speak.

From that most sacred and ecstatic hour,
   When, soul to soul, with blissful thrill we met,
My love became a passion, and a power,
   Too proud, too high, for shame or for regret.

Come to me, dearest, noblest!—lean thy head,
   Thy gracious head, once more upon my breast;
I will not shrink nor tremble, but, instead,
   Exulting, soothe thee into perfect rest.

I know thy nature, fervent, fond, yet strong,
   That holds o’er passion an imperial sway;
I know thy proud, pure heart, that would not wrong
   The frailest life that flutters in thy way;

And I, who love and trust thee, shall not I
   Be safe and sacred on that generous heart?
Albeit, with wild and unavailing sigh,
   Less firm than thou, I grieve that we should part!

Ah! let thy voice, in dear and low replies,
   Chide the faint doubt I sooner say than think;
Come to me, darling!—from those earnest eyes
   The immortal life of love I fain would drink!

^{translated from the Italian by Joseph Luzzi}

One day the most gracious woman of all, Beatrice,
was sitting in a place where prayers were being offered
to the Queen of Glory, Mary, and I could see my bliss
from where I stood. Directly between her and me,
there was a refined lady of great beauty who looked
at me several times, curious about my expression and
thinking that it was meant for her. At that point, many
became aware of her staring. I left soon after and heard
people saying, “Notice how that woman destroys him.”
When they named her, I understood that they were
speaking of the one who had stood directly in front
of Beatrice when I was gazing at her. This comforted
me, as I assured myself I had not revealed my secret
love for Beatrice earlier that day with all my staring. I
thought of making that other lovely woman a “screen”
for the truth, and I succeeded so much in doing so that
in a short time all those who spoke of me believed that
they knew my secret. I admired this woman for months
and even years, and to make the others believe in my
ploy, I wrote some random poems for her that I have no
intention of revealing here—except for when they relate
to the gracious Beatrice. So I will leave them all out and
include only what is in praise of her.

Now in coming between one desert
and another, I recognize the edges, parting and clear. 

I dip my hand into the bath
over your hair.

I ask you not to shave. 

I ask, open the error.
             And skin blades open the river.
             And your great eye opens over a ruined field.
             From here geography extends a labored pulse. 

More music, palmed casings. This love story a horse still drunk from
war, where I am the incredible absence of her jaw. A soft pink gaining.

                       You say Dearth is no name for a horse.

Here, how she rises
from every pussing wound.

The officers gouge jasper eyes
from the mud. I love you.

…

Dearth, irrational, makes empty the valley. From elongated shadows,
pulp of her desire.

           When this happens we must love ourselves fiercely, the ancestors
and lost humans declared.

The human who was wearing the hat of a particular sports team.

The human who dropped their hair comb.

The human who thought she would reach Utah by Tuesday.

           Only deserts witness the slow and complete life of water.

A story of chassis. And foraged box springs.

The one sound offered wandering night without horizon.

Each exceeds its genre while remaining truly intact.

…

             This epic has no hero but flesh
                       which defies imagination.

The carrion large birds fear, ambulant and calling your name.

Foregrounding and comments for what hinges beyond a thorough
wound:

Likely to suffer, my gift stumbles graft with sores.

           Bring me the officer’s music.

Bring me the landscape gouged from your eyes.

…

Low-basin flora. Verdant.
            Inching vertebral ache. 

A warm anatomy to feel threatened;
                                      endangered by;
                                      thick-muscled and in danger of. Iridescent over.

          And in the tissue between floodplains and the officer’s science.
And the quiet between and want for shade, the hooded eyes and fluid
body.

Gentle body for whom I lie down.

…

Tonight I walk the dog, committing to memory the darkened color and
shape of each car to pass.

So it must have been for the first stars to harvest light from what they
followed. 

I’ve placed a shotgun on layaway. A service I haven’t used since I was twelve.
            Having unlearned to be ashamed of needing time or not
            knowing how to use it.

Knowing the distension harbored in the officer’s heart. (Perceiving it
through its disciplinary veils.)

 
The horse stamps out from waxy brush. Viral smell in the cuts up her
thighs,

          Tell me, baby duck, your wrecked unsleeping door.
…

Love, if you are where I am.

                        Even your smallest of errors.
             Your most wrecked door.

The rock faces are opened.

The genres are all up for aerial eradication.

To the forty-yr-old fish. To the abundant bufflehead and ring-necked
ducks drifting south across the sunset. I love you.