Sport 42: 2014
The Rose Too Rose
The Rose Too Rose
When he turned from her
in the dark turned
he to the dark
where some important wall
was gone.
What
wall?
Wall between us?
between me and me?
(i.e.)
me
and nothing?
Watched her sleeping and
nothing. Her flesh-rose mouth
to the higher symmetry of nothing;
a thought trapped in nothing
like love in a memory;
the Afghan wind bombing
the empty rose thundering
from a corner;
the ocean at night in its real colour—
some wall not where it should be.
Here in a bed-rose, between folds
where there is no way,
having lost the beginning
of a common coil through
mankind’s bottomless
ocean of blood
for the many nights
hidden from nothing
which become as one
when the other is known,
the curtain hung with
a thousand Isaian
dreams in no physical light,
forgettable as pain.