Come Again, Season of Love
i.
because pain is only a structure of feeling
let me write to you in the language of dream
ii.
summer was a kind of promise
bringing your mouth of amber
on my petunia-peeled skin
as you healed me bruise by bruise
all the time crying that
love was an impossibility
worse than dying
iii.
but I could not hear your plea
I was busy dreaming in your skin
as it rose and fell around me
imagining being your spring-residue
bringing the ache for August back into your tired limbs
iv.
but when winter wearied its frost on me
I hardened into an unkempt melancholy
and you were like a foreign country
whose fatal secret I could have discovered
had the map of my body not shattered
and made me cry all the time
that love is an impossibility
worse than dying
v.
but this time you were listening
although you were also busy dreaming
of soft rain falling on earth-skin
where you would bury every structure of feeling
that had made love into an impossibility
vi.
now pain is no more a structure of feeling
although you are silent like a tree in autumn
vii.
after giving me a heaven of that unchanging season
I know by the name of love
whose memory with me
is worse indeed
than your death without me