As usual, the one who walks you some place
magical is not the one who walks away with
your heart. I mean, there we are: strangers
in a pub in a town as old and sapped
to you as it is new and lyrical to me,
knocking back first our own known
griefs, and later each other's uncharted faces,
until the latter reflects the former with
such beauty as pain permits, and the winds,
hemming and hawing with each other
like novice sentries against the jealous sun,
have nothing more up their sleeves.
The next evening, of course, we try to
touch what we only glimpsed behind frosted
glass, and each time we luck on glints that seem
rivets for our lights, we break down, recoup,
and break down again. And now here we are,
in another one of those misprints
of the earth, in your car, by some field,
its windows tear-hung and heavy,
signing each other's bodies. We
kiss and kiss, but transcend nothing,
escape nothing, for the following night
I shall be back at our first domain, wrecked
and salt-sodden with the first man, on the night
you skipped town forever. By the fourth dawn,
the sky will have bathed the glum off the streets
while you and I will be writing across cities
and oceans, dreaming of eternal sunshine and
a golden city where all our debts will be paid.