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SLEEP,
SILHOUETTE
Sleep,
silhouette, beneath night’s bridge
in
a gown of water. My voice I
give,
weak
with insistence, to the sharp air;
the
key is taken by those xylophone lights
that
dint the black ebb we are lapped in.
Still
world. What do I ask for?
Names
for
what we are, our deeps perform.
Cold
shadow, sleep now, one day’s love
having
drained us with sweet tribulation.
We
know of pangs, for bodies feel
but
only the mind remembers. Slide
into
this numb death of satiety,
a
forced integument of clammy rest,
green
lips apart, I with no name
to
designate our effort and our loss.
A
tide, but not of sleep, steals you.
Behind
the dear brown of your eye’s gristle
I
hear the enchantment of bruised sobs.
I
know the pain. Rehearse me
while I live.
Recall,
moist bulletin, my tongue.
And
my ambassador fingers grown aware
liquidity
meant use, meant readiness.
I
was not marginal; dealt close—
scorning
your prelude whimper—
stung
your red interior with singing pains,
longer
joys scattering then, until
from
crotch to chin our sweaty bodies held
and
we arrived, gyrating breast to breast,
at
motion like the motion of a stone
wherein
we learned duration, beyond grief.
We
were not satisfied. Who is,
alive?
The
human fascinated. We
forsook
the
mood of granite; eddied to brinks,
testing
disintegration till we fell,
being
weary of stone, for only flesh keeps time.
Rested.
Resumed. And the day
died.
A
cold wind came and still no name
for
the scared sorrows lapping our arched bones.
No
name. An eye—no
name—behind the moon
explores
me with your stare, that’s all.
Until
I know. Your arms: in them
I
have shown mercy to the egregious moon,
to
the pathetic stars and to my flesh.
Now
like a boom a recognition breathes.
I’ve
found content more final than a name.
Upon
your lids darkens the bruise of sorrow.
Sleep
hardens our insoluble lives.
Lights
die. But the world’s over
now.
Alan
Marshfield
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