(Collage by Suzi Dennis) “And ungraspable multitudes swarm, come together in the crinkles of tree bark, in the telescope’s eye,” . (Czeslaw Milosz) What veil is lifted when we first see love, not as a gift – or worse: A prize but as a play of light, catching or caught on the wings of a [...]
“while below, the foghorns bend to their work, bringing home what is coming home, blessing what goes.” . (Jane Hirshfield) I can remember that I read to you. November, it was – in Prague, of course. You were sitting in that chair with the Communist upholstery, that creaked each time you moved [...]
“We could never really say what it is like, this hour of drinking wine together” . (Sharon Olds) You never knelt before me, drying my feet with your hair but then I never claimed to be a Saviour. The water that we drank may have been wine but how [...]
There are no footsteps. No one will come. . (Kate Rhodes.) Before, I was afraid of everything that might be hidden in the dark. I always feared I’d stumble upon truth: Something the night would fail to hide – a pattern that might half reveal the distance measured between breaths, between the [...]
“and anger is no more than some old clock ringing to itself in ancient ruins” . (Selima Hill) I did not set out to be saved or kept inside the prison of your arms, the stern appraisal of your mind. If I am guilty, I am so because I dared to dream that you would [...]
(For M.) The bed, still warm, still holds on to the smell of you; your imprint on the pillow my holy Turin shroud, while you, now mirror bound, applying make-up, remind me of self-portraits by Rembrandt and Frans Hals. It is funny and quite humbling to admit that lipstick, eye-liner, mascara bring out your beauty [...]
Tengo hambre de tu boca, de tu voz, de tu pelo y por las calles voy sin nutrirme, callado, Flocks of birds drop from the sky. They cling to the branches of trees, replacing fallen leaves with song, before resuming their long journeys. (I am tree) no me sostiene el pan, el alba me desquicia, [...]
l Can revelation ever be a mercy? To leave your house, like Saul, to head out for Damascus – and be blinded… To claim that God (or finding God) is love may be as much acknowledgement as revelation: That both destroy old worlds. ll Love may become a habit that you learn to wear and [...]
Could I undress you with one word, one look, that word (or look) would need to last a thousand years to do you justice.
Walking through the streets with all these dreams and ghosts, caught by a shiver of moon, a passing cloud – a passing moment of perfection in a sigh of stars, that bathe me in their distant glory. Walking through the streets, my heart a waiting murmur, my lips now pause for breath, one word: your [...]
Tonight I’ll disconnect the phone and lock all doors and close the curtains. It will be me and my TV, some sushi maybe and some wine. The couch and comfy cushions now a small tropical island in a sea of quiet bliss. I’ll start with something light and frothy – something that will make me [...]
The glamour of your face, your hair now loosened in dark waves: the sudden rightness of these moments – all of me now here in trembling awe, kneeling (praying) tongue-tied to your flesh and rising heat. (I need – I need so much to see you, taste you on my skin, embrace you and lay [...]
(I can see the shape of your dreaming and touch the stem of your breath.) Your lips surround me now. You take me in, like flames that taste the heart of the wood, and words on skin or bone-carved flutes, like a shock of warmth, as the butcher’s hand or a priest holds up [...]
The grain of the wood, fastened and softened by time and breath; these pebbles so smooth, coated and left with the silk of dead waves – and you, all of you, your flesh so awake to my longing, my touch, are more beautiful yet than all these reminders that night will embrace us and change [...]
Waking to the moment of your touch I hold my breath and body like an altar, like a kiss. (I want to hold your breath upon my tongue; I want to weigh your touch upon my skin.) As the light needs an horizon to submit its colours to the weight of night (I want your [...]
You’re like a Rembrandt, painted on the edges of slow moving, moonlit clouds, a promise that the world is full of wonders, new beginnings and encounters. My love, you’re all the stories that will start tomorrow or tonight, and all the waiting turned to soft applause and laughter, all the moments that are left for [...]
And when it ends it grows so quiet. Logic has a weight to it and so does magic. Love, when it is gone, moves beyond time and distance and it grows so quiet.
Some journeys start like stories, some like dreams. (I can see the shape of your dreaming and touch the hem of your breath; these sheets, dressed in darkness, touching your flesh.) Strange journeys, strange frontiers, where some things end in stories, others move like dreams. (I can’t see my skin through these fields of you; [...]
God (but you are beautiful) I whisper, half afraid to breathe or close my eyes. 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.) And I am naked and I die a miracle of dreams.
Dreaming, cold and beautiful, winter is back home again in Prague, like ghosts of lovers, cigarettes and smiles, the smell of beer in crowded cellar bars, the darkening rooms and shadow time – everything now reaching for this sleepy, soft embrace. The bridges rise in magic shapes of rounding dreams and coming back to where [...]