Golden Horses

Waves by Caroline Gormley

I have fused my many lives into one; (for all deaths are one death)

the shadows of ships are not a ship.

I said that nothing should be irrelevant.

My past is cut from what poses shall not destroy me.

For this moment, this one rare glance, we are together.

I press you to me. I indent my name. 

The rooms where we sat stream away like leaves, 

water running down gutters, green depths facing me eyeless 

at the end of the eternal procession, 

migrating east, west, north and south;

How strange to oar’s one way. 

You shall remain here, no shadow made of quivering leaves; 

exist here and now and not in streaks and patches, 

one thousand eyes of curiosity do not see us.

Let me look. 

Chaos, detail, return. I am no longer amazed by names.

But you exist somewhere. Here are pictures. 

It gets later and later. He has forgotten. 

He is these white sheets

what is abstract, always in your presence, from this table, these lights,

these pilgrimages, these moments of departure, start some

little language

such as lovers use, as if it were a fact. 

I remember the narrow streets, with our hands on the cold known territory, this forest of the unknown world alight.

The machine then works; I note the rhythm, the I, and again I, and again I.

***

Caroline is a poet living in Brooklyn.