I’ve done it, gone through
the photographs you saved not
for me to see but
for that mythic self,
futureless, ever-present.
I’d say “We’ve done it.”
Together we saw
you kissing your girl friend on
Nantucket — lovely
girl; architecture
in Berlin, Vienna, elsewhere.
Numerous boyfriends.
You had wonderful
taste. I saved a few for my
own eternity.
If starting over
means saying yes once again
to the abyss of
possibility,
I say yes in memory
of you who said yes
to wine and fasting.
Like you I have no reason
for saying yes but
a feeling that to
say yes to life at this point
makes ultimate sense.
Say you whoever
whatever wherever you
are now may I in-
troduce my new friend?
Time passes here, your picture
absorbs memory
so I put it by.
Memory’s absolutes pass —
everything passes.
An old man I wake
with urgency. I relieve
myself, return to
dreams, urgencies, fresh
images of ultimate
love which does not sleep.
I am not over-
given to the patience of
images and yet
Fierdorczuk’s image
of flowers bred beneath the
snow covering a
dead woman sheds a
strange light, nihilism yes
but nihilism
in whose light I am
simply what I am in light
of its stranger light.
Yes, we welcomed the
angel of death to our house.
Its strangeness rendered
the nothing less strange.
You were always ready for
some new adventure.
You had had enough
of pain. All I could do is
say I love you. So:
Am I at a new
interface with creation?
You said yes and I
am at a loss for
words. The angel is real and
nothing not so much.
You put up with my
lectures on haiku at the
night school. In the breaks
we’d take the ele-
vator up and kiss — short break
between Basho and
Buson. We returned
to class red-faced and happy.
Everybody smiled
as I resumed the
talk about the fertile void
and empty fulness.
The boat being out,
we’d smoke and drink on the dock
empty at sundown.
We felt the presence
of the shy night heron on
a rock shelf below,
watching the water
in the shadows. Then the stars.
And we were shadows.
The great bird would croak.
A voice from the underworld?
No, no. Fellow crea-
ture, it withdrew with
the return of the tour boat,
all lights and laughter.
