My recollections of you cast ashore
the brunt of love-garden’s night.
Sharp currents, in the twilight,
push through me. Abrupt flashlights
across my face: I crouch
and shield my head with both arms,
brave several cuts that leave tokens
from the past on me;
I say a quick prayer. I pray
for some outpouring to soften
the heart’s hard
soil—
But now I search myself with questions:
Who is empty, I ask, and
in want of capacity
to love those who afflicted them?
I suppose it’s me, perhaps it’s you.
You may, like a psychic, I imagine:
glimpse moments when records of
love-garden’s night plays before my eyes
so that at the same time, miles apart,
you reckon the same manipulation—
which I, on my part, endure time and again.
At your margin of the world, I don’t suppose
you cower but instead confront, ad nauseam,
the scenery from years past: A knife in your hand,
a school of angry feminists trailing your charge.
You may, on one descent into the past, arrive in love-garden’s
night to find me nestled by the root of a pink trumpet
tree. Same place we both sat memories ago as campus lamps
torched the dark winds with orange rays.
I may say I tried the best I could to stifle an instinct
But the quiet invitation of your transparent gown…
(Aspects pointed bare)
Then the flourish of wildered words which
(in place of hands) designed a soft infiltration—
If you won’t love me
Then allow, at least, a friendship of
benefits…
I did say once that language, not desire, would be the end of me;
A dozen angry feminists sneering over my tombstone
—hurt people often tilt toward mischief.
I have since love-garden’s night been at trial in a fixed courtroom,
before a panel. It took you, you claim now and again, this long
to register the assault hidden in my many propositions.
So you come bearing knife-judgments upon me,
the anguish of memory like wind across your face.
Every now and then scraps of you upset the quiet. Errant
claims riffle through the mind. But all guilt, as of now,
is away from me; only indignation remains— E
