In your world Love has tentacles
which it wraps around your body
to squeeze out even that last
breath you gulped before they tightened
like a garrote. You fell into a stupor,
until they released you, suddenly,
like the limp arms of an exhausted lover…
In your world Wine is never sweet,
because the young women who tread
the red grapes let their salt tears
drop continually into the vat.
When you wave your arms, and cry out,
‘Stop, stop! ‘ they misunderstand you,
and stop treading, but their tears,
so many tears, keep falling and falling.
When you approach them, your own eyes
glazed over, the youngest one raises her head
to face you, and you see yourself
mirrored in both of her wide, tremulous eyes…
In your world, Desires are carefully placed
in purple-tinted glass vessels, which are
carefully placed on high wooden shelves
in the attic room of an ancient mansion,
its outside walls covered with vines, and
surrounded by hedges and willow trees.
The silence of this place is never violated.
Wolves, who are friends to lovers and poets,
patrol the neighborhood with steadfast resolve…
In your world, Blue is your chosen radiance:
blue is the color of dusk and dawn,
the color of lake water and surging oceans.
Blue is the color inside the painting
you watched Kokoschka create with his nerves.
Blue is the color of Schubert’s sonatas
your sister plays with intense purpose.
Blue is the color of the poems you write
in an adjacent room, suffused with autumnal glow.
And, even now your heart shining in its blue
hour, you realize blue will be the color
of Ellis’s eyes when he awakes
on the morning of his Second Resurrection….
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