At the Edge of the Forest, and: The Date, and: The Farewell

At the Edge of the Forest

IFor such a long time we thought all it would takewas stretching our arms out to touch the skyand hold the old horizon on a leash

for such a long time that the gesture stays in usat the sight of a woman surprised at dawnwashing day and night in her tears

that nothing is left at last but the shadowto raze once again on love's currentour bodies slumped in the bedroom with

the sky like a stocking on the nude parquet.

IILove, you would say. I would hear edge of the forest,broom bushes, footbridge. Your eyes resisted.Yet it was only a threshold to cross.

Overflow the body and let love be freshwater, not as it is here a lake where fish anddrowned men, sky and clouds,

lovely promises spin spin. Stay, you would say,and I would see men dying at the gatesstruggling like blue burst by a storm

their panicked arms their Icarus wings.

The Date

What is it that's still keeping you herein the damp air and in the windscowling at the lilacs. Is itthe house where in the shadows you once touched

stone bodies and made tears gush forth?Or the path through the brambles that your stepslet you lose in lassitudelike an old desire, a childhood abandoned

beside the pond, which continues keepingcount of the dead on its own near the sky?—and you would still like to lean your headon its frail shoulders before reading

the last date of your days there in the grass.

The Farewell

You might be able to grab the sea by the hairand shake it like an old carpet, put a whole forestto sleep just by looking itstraight in the eye, tie

the wind up with a piece of string and make itmarch to your orders, easy, barelya child's game in the playroom of words,and the universe in his pocket merely

a marble, but to erasea letter, a single one, from the cry thatshe uttered when, burning her last boatsyou let drop again at the threshold

her pale hand, that, no.