Two Young Swimmers

Two Young Swimmers

When the streets, the houses, the curtains, the windows, the hollow
spires of churches are all buried in ten thousand years of mud,
and the fields that are dry as dust, the cold rain, the mountains, the sky,
when there’s nothing to separate today from any last night:
what will become of you then, what of me, what will happen
to the rage and the hunger, to the forlorn love?

The young woman on the bus stop burst into tears, the echo of her eyes,
the words, the pauses that drip through the ceiling, the damp vault, the meaning,
the disk of the sun’s flower, the straitjacket, the northern night,
the tankard stains, the tables not serviced here in the unlovable, undying fight.

And there is ample space here, there is room to sit here and wonder.
Down here there is room to sit down.

And you take my hand, you lead me inside the scent, the burning beach,
the steps on virgin sand, you open your hair for the wind to hear,
the deep of the sea, the deep of the darkness, the nakedness
of two young swimmers under the moon when everything starts.

(29.7.2005)