The knife can’t ask for love.
The mountain rises,
yet the altar and the lamb
lie silent.
I offer you my voice, my reason;
the fires and the flesh and all
the years and blood and memories
it took to build a soul.
I come to you.
I offer love.
I come to you
in silence.
The pubs are mostly closed by now,
the Prinsengracht all but deserted;
bicycles well locked or casually disposed of.
Stolen this last night, tomorrow the police will take them,
sell them off next month:
recycling’s just another game.
A February rain,
so cold it feels like fireflies stinging:
every breath and every word a comic strip balloon,
torn apart by harpies’ wings;
the cobble-stones, softly [...]
Torn from the dark
and delivered to reason,
the child, dressed in blood,
now is turned to the light
and explodes into tears,
and it howls.
Torn from the dark,
from the thorns of the stars,
and the top of this hill
I can suddenly see
this vision of silk and soft flesh,
made of longing.
Torn from the dark
and delivered to you,
all my senses explode.
I am [...]
First came the wind, carrying the smell of spices.
The boy, still asleep, saw his grandmother, standing in the kitchen, while she bruised the roasted cardamom and other seeds in the mortar, adding olive oil, then thyme and rosemary, then garlic, more oil.
Sometimes, at this stage, his grandmother would call him inside and watch approvingly [...]
A burning screen of summer sky:
the evening set alight
and touched with disappearing.
The island clouds, blue-veined
with purple hues,
as irreplaceable as porcelain -
a breath of marble floating,
so at home
against the rising shadows
of a dying day.
The stubborn threads of fading light
now move the dust that’s grown
on windows that grew tired
of the distances that must remain
between their liquid frame [...]
The early light,
like milk-fed ice,
slowly fills the room,
where all my dreams still smell of you.
My first smile and my hungry eyes
now look for some bright shadow
that the night has left behind:
something - some reminder of your flesh.
The winter morning curls itself
around my bed and like some sleepy cat,
with white fur sparkling and
with cold, cruel, sapphire [...]
Â
God (but you are beautiful)
I whisper,
half afraid to breathe
or close my eyes.
So beautiful -
so beautiful (and here with me)
and I am old and
I am hungry, lonely
and not used
to worlds of wonder.
Come (she comes to me)
now - and naked
and I die a
thousand miracles
of dreaming.
We’re shadow breath
and shadow breathing;
a whisper of dark,
a trigger of dust.
(And we’re dancing and
dancing the shadows and loss.)
The dove is a dove shape
against bits of sky
and the clouds are forgiven
the rudeness of light.
We are whisper of darkness,
hidden like doves,
(dancing and dancing
through shadow and loss.)