And we, who over time had loved and wanted more,
had spoken indelicately of money, jobs and scars,
and scrawled indelibly in the new earth
paeans to Venus and the stars.
But when did we invent the streets
and bikes and passing cars?
When did dying come to altar,
From whence, and from how far?
Why, if not for stubborn-green suburban lawns
have we come to where we are,
mouths ablaze with the clarion brilliance of the dawn?
In uncertain corners,
milklight dissolves
rapidly into black--
Caravaggio's black,
unrepentant in its silence.
In these rooms,
strangely neutral-smelling,
a man came close
to a god,
cornered it with some
degree of certainty,
and let it back
into the kitchens,
the closets and bathrooms,
and certain corners
in which tiny pantheons
of screw-heads, foil
wrappers and apple
cores console the dust.
The god that got away
makes the rounds, a
foot-soldier on the
shoulder of a narrow
highway, from one town
to another. Both the god
and I will visit monuments
to humanity--
the couch, the toilet,
the insciption on the
underside of the bunk-bed:
There are no
foreign stars.
Though more or
less distant,
the light from one
still buries itself
deep in the darkness
as much as that
which spills over
windowsills and
into certain corners.