Draft Light's Life

 
One.
What others cannot hear, I hear,
even barefoot silence cannot slip past my ear.
Every quiet holds its own kind of sound—one must listen.
In a lover's letter, sighs wrap themselves beneath the seal,
a melancholy guitar weeps there, I can hear it.
What people flee from, glimpsing only shadows, or
flee from having never seen at all, I have seen clearly, many times.
You see some smiles arranged there, on lips,
love hiding at the threshold of eyes, and never notice.
Deep in the thicket a blue flower blooms—I keep track of that too.


The first day these lips kissed, I watched
even faithful love walk away into the distance.
Know this: dreams never hide in lips.
Even the sanest madman would decree: if someone lovingly
gifts you the most beautiful waistband, try as you might, you'll never wear it below your knees!
Two.
One who is no longer alive—is his love still valid?
Yes, he killed himself out of love, then
forgot how to love. Wait—if he killed himself,
how could he forget again? Perhaps someone died, but
he did not die. His corpse, wherever you found it, for God's sake
bury that first! Another year is coming, we can get by
with last year's poems, where the world is still beautiful,
love still fresh. Nothing new will be needed. Yet it occurs to me:
if he isn't even alive, what validates his love?
Stop the mockery, make up for it some other time, I say again—
whoever found the dead man, go, bury him right now!
Three.
Listen, I love you very much,
I mean, I loved you very much!
The me who accepted everything and gave you my love,
where there was trust and mostly reverence,
that me never learned to live with expectations, so
don't dim the joy in your eyes thinking of my tears,
instead pocket that fake emotion
and sleep quietly as you do each day. Sleep is safe, after all!
One who dies of love lives on as a flower—
someday you'll know this for certain.
Four.
Spring spread through my heart like a knife blade, I still
live with that deep scar as morning's fading love.
The sleep that breaks when dreams shatter—that sleep is like a stray bullet,
it pierces and spreads infinite weariness, saying: Now live the easy way!
Then love—flows like an old spring glimpsed through leaves, or like ink
from black letters in scripture, writing love's gospel on the faithful stars.
Even then, if the star-flames begin to dim, I understand easily:
the love that gave birth to this new love is ancient and genuine!
Five.
Once more the clustered grapes rise, leaning into thick leaves,
summer's heat hides in the grain's womb. Oh, you've probably
forgotten—while time remains, one must find shade beyond the gate!
Autumn's tune and paintbrush in the bee's hum, in birds' silent sulking,
when it walks forward with shy steps, saving its elbows, the whole world
gazes at a piece of cloud that waits for a caterpillar
sleeping on a tree branch in the odd hours to wake. Can you believe it?
Still on earth at least one person, before death or bowing their head,
cries out, rejoices, desires, grieves, lives.
And because they live, they die.
Six.
Love, not affection.
Body, not faith.
Torture, not praise.
Blood, not dreams.
Murder, not death.


Asking for water from a damp, raw puddle,
asking for spring from some dreadlocked ascetic in winter,
those who cheerfully waste some of life's countless shaky moments—
if you want to see any of them, look at me with all your heart.
This fragile life, crawling on my knees in meaningless love's procession,
I spent in countless graves, staying alive, keeping only the body going...


In a lit candle's draft of light, how many times this foolish life
blazed and died in death's intimate kiss—I haven't kept count. What you
call love, I no longer wish to call by any name.
How many people, wanting too much to live, couldn't even die properly—
you won't find those statistics in any government office or on graveyard nameplates.
Love strangled some self-satisfied fools to death, who until their deaths, even after, believed themselves wise.