Some words fall in gestures

 
What are you doing? Did you eat tonight?
Tell me, when you sit down to write, do you
wrap your room in gentle shadows of light and dark?
Do you keep me close...in memory?
Do you keep with you the dreams of our beginning days, our nursery of hopes?


I long so deeply, you know, to spend a thousand nights in your touch!
To live only in the spell of those eyes...
Can you tell me why it feels this way?
Emptiness never felt like this before, you know that?


Your voice that awakens intoxication,
the play of your mischievous sweet eyes,
the essence of your lips wrapped in silence...how many times I've left home!
Why do you call so madly, tell me, beloved?
I'll drift forever in the current of your breath,
drifting until I'm drawn into some whirlpool's deep spiral...
Maybe then I'll be lost, completely lost!


The part of 'me' that belongs to you — where could that ever be lost?
How much more of me do you want? How much deeper must I go for it to be true going?
I'll place these two eyes in the folds of your eyes,
one by one I'll ask for answers through a thousand shames.


Let autumn pass this way, just as before...
If I'm burned to ash in the heat of your love,
then let a whole 'you's' absence burn me as it pleases!


Don't be afraid, this absence doesn't burn me...
This absence excavates me, cultivates me with skillful turns!
I know that too...you've held me with such gentle touch, such tender hope—
so much that only the blood cells in this body suddenly feel it!


However much I've burned in those eyes' signals,
however much this heart has worn away in your intoxicating scent, your feeling,
however many times I've lost to your touch-debt, your supreme knowing,
tell me truly, how many lovers can read such cryptic language?
Those who can — do they burn too, and freely burn others...
exactly like me?


What riddle is this, of what life?
Familiar shores feel strangely heavy today,
there's no leisure in this soul-house of mine,
this empty life lies lifeless somewhere,
vast lamentations wake today, and
fierce war rages...on this shore, on that shore!
In an instant the return boat is lost, the boatman in terrible trouble!


Loneliness's shroud-procession descends the road each day,
binds rebellion's chains to this body, yet time won't surrender.
Devoted lips never touch, not even by mistake,
lest they become bound, lest they become lifeless!


These eyes have never seen you
through the darkness of your pain,
yet one eye understands what burden the heart carries!
So I spread these two empty hands in vain hope of receiving...
what if by sudden mistake I actually found you!