THE PROMISE OF NOSTOS
The sea is not bent on circularity: it says Here is an island,
anchor here.
Because love waits, the broken hull
is soon patched, a torn sail sewn to hold the wind,
and then once again they set course. The uncalled for jubilance
at departure, feigned tears, the make-believe dream
where so-and-so appeared to say fly away home.
They do not leave for home. They do not leave to return,
despite their promises. They leave to leave, and if I love them
it's because they come hungry as a dream, and like a dream
their stay distills a life, or what a life could be --
THE RIGHT TO PLEASURE
You would think I would go mad with grief
when the white sails fill and the keel cuts
the waters like a knife honed on whetstone:
that's the way you're taught to interpret these signs --
matted hair, the salt-dirt lines where sweat has run,
hands that feed the mouth but will not wipe it.
But when my love decides to go and then is gone,
I can still taste him, bitter in the throat; I still
feel the weight of his body as he fights sleep.
I do not fight it: on the contrary I live there,
and what you see in me that you think grief
is the refusal to wake, that is to say, is pleasure:
qui donne du plaisir en a, and so if
when he couldn't sleep in that long still night
you sensed it and woke to show him how
to unfasten each and every button, then it is
promised you, even when he goes --
--I've been rereading Homer's Odyssey, and somehow these poems resonate.
