206

Mother
Our room grows familiar : first light.
            I will miss our furniture when it is gone.
                        The light, though, comes as it will always come.
I have been sober all these hours :
            You will wake and, waiting for me to leave,
                        Go to the cabinet. Go stabilise your heart, dear.
We are all thirsty when we wake.
            In the grate our cigarettes from last night
                        Are dry and blameless. They don't remember us.

The gate was open, and all the lights
            Stepped through. The dome of it was hung
                        With them like great dusty fruit. I held you there,
In the end of the garden far from the house,
            Knowing that you knew my worth to you.
                        The heavens were a factory of stars! Florid nebulae
Wilting from their distant quarters, revenants
            That spoke their meaning to us, each in turn.
                        Our love has always been figured by its formation.
For that, I cannot help but love the night.

            I will go down to the table in the first faint
                        Light and sit quietly, and wait for the day to close.
I will wait for you to come down.
            God loves us with our wounds, like costumes :
                        All seeking some disclosure, all children of a kind.
You will sleep until the evening,
            And come down and not speak, a dark silent shape,
                        Sloping back up the staircase with a bottle in your
Hand as if it were a mountain. Your head bandaged,
            Heavy with loveliness : man's last archetype. Pierrot!
                        Come back to me as I knew you, in our first bloom.