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The moon that broke on the fencepost will not hold.
Desire will not hold. Memory will not hold.
The house you grew up in; its eaves; its attic will not hold.
The still lives and the Botticellis will not hold.
The white peaches in the bowl will not hold.
Something is always about to happen.
You get married, you change your name,
and the sun you wore like a scarf on your wrist has vanished.
It is an art, this ever more escaping grasp of things;
imperatives will not still it - no stay or wait or keep
to seize the disappeared and hold it clear, like pain.
So tell the car idling in the street to go on;
tell the skirmish of chesspieces to go on;
tell the scraps of paper, the line to go on.
It is winter: that means the blossoms are gone,
that means the days are getting shorter.
And the dark water flows endlessly on.
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If, in this life, I could see them again,
I would trace a fingertip
around their light-holding mouths:
the painted mason jar that sat, squat,
in ascending height,
on a ledge in my grandmother's house
Necks glazed with birds-of-paradise,
they choked on paw-paw spears,
prunes, shields of pear, and nectarines
with their claws curled in,
while the muscat grapes
wizened away in a Wedgewood cup.
The first Wednesday of December
her backyard mangoes boiled
to chutney like clockwork. It sputtered
and set in infantry rows of jam-pots
for the widows on Ladies' Day,
each lid fringed with a tartan skirt -
Of all the things I miss on earth,
what I miss the most is the perfume
of that windowsill -
jar by jar cooling under a tropic moon,
those five mouths
fragrant with the death of fruit.
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4. |
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The dark hours drop off, one by one.
Then in the morning, these plums.
How can we fail to love them, purple-black,
arranged like cowed children's heads,
slunk home, returned to us?
Now they rest like the dead
and their skins are blue, and cold to touch -
You brought them here, each hand a polished loss.
They lay heavy as memory on the cloth.
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This is the room. These are the ruins that ruined us.
This is the sheet music, these are the books,
and last century's cups painted with roses.
Tell me, was it here the future lapsed, became an unusable gift?
And after, did we love it still, as we always did?
Tell me before the sun breaks,
before the lovers lose their faces.
Sing the old hymn again, the hallelujah.
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7. |
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Night strangles the island,
yet we play on and on. Absence thickens
my throat. In its hollow your spear
clicks on marble, moonlit
rats scatter like obols, and a ring
of mesh gleams at your neck.
The house rocks its tusks in silence
as our hands fall and fall. Funeral games -
now all we fought for is dead.
Throw the dice again,
feel the years tumble
from your fingertips
like bones.
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8. |
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9. |
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How could he bear that golden weight?
How could he wander the small villages singing,
leading the slow consoling eyes of the goats
and the slumberous herdsmen to the place
where nothing enters or falls, and even the simplest
beauty endures? How could he go out crying
"my love is dead" in a world where surely everything
was her, and her? In the end, Orpheus did not sing
for love. He sang for the instant he forgot
who he was and had been, for those few notes
shining shapelessly above the strings.
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10. |
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She is thinking of the tart, thumb-sized plums
they ate together, and of one in particular.
Unremarkable, except it was the last he gave her.
Of what it was, to stand in the small stone
kitchen, tasting the bittersweet strings
of fruit clinging to the wood. The intimacy
in those ruins. Saying plum and not yet
meaning heartache. Letting the ordinary become the last.
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11. |
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12. |
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The moon that broke on the fencepost will not hold.
Desire will not hold. Memory will not hold.
The house you grew up in; its eaves; its attic will not hold.
The still lives and the Botticellis will not hold.
The white peaches in the bowl will not hold.
Something is always about to happen.
You get married, you change your name,
and the sun you wore like a scarf on your wrist has vanished.
It is an art, this ever more escaping grasp of things;
imperatives will not still it - no stay or wait or keep
to seize the disappeared and hold it clear, like pain.
So tell the car idling in the street to go on;
tell the skirmish of chesspieces to go on;
tell the scraps of paper, the line to go on.
It is winter: that means the blossoms are gone,
that means the days are getting shorter.
And the dark water flows endlessly on.
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