Fearful
The day awakens in the train. In the compartment's open door a late traveler sits and waits, sun in the thick lenses of glasses balanced on his nose. By a thin smile on the face of the hour stirring beside me, I am urged to jump into a life of concrete acts. I must go to the dining car. A woman with a lily skin and mouth of poppies sits before ivory dreams of journeys sweeter than cocoa in the seat facing me. She laughs and the appointments, that divide my life into half hours, disappear as I sense, the small deaths call me.
The painter has misplaced his ear inside the clock. Streets cross the broad canals like women, bent from age, in clothes too black for the bright noon. One bridge after the other asks about you. But you have hidden yourself in a painting that lurks behind walls topped with razor wire; a picture, in which Stars burst like soap bubbles around a Moon encircled by rings of haze.
The old stone churches sing requiems. Each stone has its own voice, its place in the dim, ancient choir. Like a hero of badly faded battles Death comes toward us, gray, tired, and unsteady, but visibly teased by your fine hands with parchment skin you offer him as greeting, but without fear until you meet again in a much quieter hour.
The columns sleep on the beige field: Roman soldiers, thrown down carelessly after a loud battle's exertions. This morning, as the sun raised pearls on your shoulders, we were both victors. Thereafter, in the bath, I told you the tale of the Grape that yields its juice once only. You are sweet, like the bread of bees and your scent lives longer than wild roses on Mount Carmel. Like both, you also sting.
The sea is a sea of flowers, and the wind moves waves through leaves, and birds are the fish in this sea. The joy of beating wings and the twittering, the motion of the tides of colors in the pond, all of it as though Nolde were still alive and directing Nature in a Symphony of sharps in praise of Creation with his brush. I see you are devoted to your awe, your eyes larger than the eyes of our small son, from which peonies sprout. You glide over these far-off blooming dreams, an origami skiff out of Japan with red and golden eyes on its sides that capture the entirety of its surroundings like a painter, filled with celestial joy.
