Dispersal
I have given away the last roses.
The days are drained of light like roses
blowing too late, without the strength for colour, dead in a crib of dry leaves.
Take it that I have made love to the sea
without a residue.
All that it needs to make the roses fade has thrown us on this bed of truth where all our dikes are breached. Here clothes were dropped like petals cast along the waves
While we gave each other our names.
Now we go back, anonymous as water, now I resign you back to your possessions
and your possessed. Somewhere the earth is
spinning all by itself. With it we spun one turn, locked in each other's arms, each of us making love to one sea.
It is a lone and trackless miracle to understand the language of your eyes free of their glance of duty at those tides which nudge us here. Now, love, I bless our firstborn death, the master of this ship, taking my way with monsters, letting you go.
NATHANIEL TARN
Previous page
