Beloved One, your body and mine,
They have known the never-still, deranged
Poetry born from the touch
Of legs, and breasts, and lips:
The poetry that brings to flesh
An almost indescribable escape,
So thinly strung, and yet so enormous
That breath can scarcely bear
The rhythms of its outward flight.
We have been scorched by knowledge.
The dim point always just beyond
The farthest reach of longing—
The point that men call heaven
Appalled us, stood an inch away from us.
We will never forget
How near we came to grazing
The visioned lure of freedom—
The lure that stays enticing
Only because it is swifter than human desires
All of life receded
To a charming, harmless fantasy
And leaned in vain against
Our guarded minutes of reality.
The memory of this
Orchestral space when heart and soul were one
Will always move within us:
Always dizzy and impenitent
Beneath the ordered garbs of other days.
And we will speak of it
With eager, ghost-like approaches
To the past, unperished miracle,
Cherishing each detail
As though we had wrenched impossible jewels
From the dumb reluctance of life.