Becoming Light Read Free Page A

acqua
    e i corpi nostril
    abbracciati l’uno
    all’ altro,
    e la luce del sole
    strisciando il mare
    finchè il plenilunio
    lo colma,
    e nel tondo della luna
    nasce il nostro amore.
    L’amore ci guarisce
    perchè ci ricorda
    l’integrità
    che abbiamo perso
    nella nostra lotta
    contro noi stessi.
    E in questa bottiglia
    ti mando quella integrità
    e il mare la solleva
    e la lascia cader
    giù.
    La luna e la nostra postina
    Porterà il messaggio.
    Io aspetto sulla spiaggia
    il suo sorgere.
    Rendo questo scintillio
    nelle sue mani
    capaci.

To a Transatlantic Mirror
    When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door…
    —Suzuki
    Sick of the self,
    the self-seducing self—
    with its games, its fears,
    its misty memories, and its prix fixe menu
    of seductions (so familiar
    even to the seducer)
    that he grows sick
    of looking at himself
    in the mirrored ceiling
    before he takes the plunge into this new
    distraction from the self
    which in fact leads back
    to self.
    Self—the prison.
    Love—the answer and the door.
    And yet the self should also be a door,
    swinging, letting loves both in and out,
    for change
    is the world’s only fixity, and fixity
    her foremost lie.
    How to trust love
    which has so often
    betrayed the betrayer,
    seduced the seducer,
    and then turned out
    to be not even love?
    We are jaded,
    divorced from our selves
    without ever having found
    ourselves—and yet we
    long for wholeness
    if not fixity,
    for harmony
    if not music of the spheres.
    If life is a flood
    and there is no ark,
    then where do the animals float
    two by two?
    I refuse to believe
    that the flesh falls
    from their bones
    without understanding
    ever coming,
    and I refuse to believe
    that we must leave
    this life entirely alone.
    Much harrumphing
    across the ocean,
    my brother poet coughs,
    clears his throat
    (he smokes too much),
    and gazes into the murky
    depths of his word-processor,
    as if it were a crystal ball.
    I do not know
    all that hides
    in his heart of darkness
    but I know I love
    the thoughts
    that cloud the surface
    of his crystal ball.
    He longs to leap
    headlong into his future
    and cannot.
    This chapter’s finished,
    his self peels back
    a skin.
    Snakes hiss,
    shedding their scales.
    The goddess smiles.
    She sends her missives
    only to the brave.

Middle Aged Lovers, II
    You open to me
    a little,
    then grow afraid
    and close again,
    a small boy
    fearing to be hurt,
    a toe stubbed
    in the dark,
    a finger cut
    on paper.
    I think I am free
    of fears,
    enraptured, abandoned
    to the call
    of the Bacchae,
    my own siren,
    tied to my own
    mast,
    both Circe
    and her swine.
    But I too
    am afraid:
    I know where
    life leads.
    The impulse
    to join,
    to confess all,
    is followed
    by the impulse
    to renounce,
    and love—
    imperishable love—
    must die,
    in order
    to be reborn.
    We come
    to each other
    tentatively,
    veterans of other
    wars,
    divorce warrants
    in our hands
    which we would beat
    into blossoms.
    But blossoms
    will not withstand
    our beatings.
    We come
    to each other
    with hope
    in our hands—
    the very thing
    Pandora kept
    in her casket
    when all the ills
    and woes of the world
    escaped.

Gazing Out, Gazing In
    (to my lover gazing out the window)
    Because I am here
    anchoring you
    to the passionate darkness,
    you gaze out the window
    at the light.
    My love is the thing
    that frees you
    to follow your eyes,
    as your love,
    a sword made of moonlight
    and blood,
    and smelling of sex
    and salt marshes,
    frees me to gaze
    with a calm inward
    eye.
    In all your frenzied searching
    you never stood
    calmly at the window.
    But now the sea,
    the city and the sky
    are all seen
    as if from a perch
    at the edge of the cosmos,
    where I sit behind you
    gazing
    at the fire.

The Demon Lover
    Unable to bear the falsehoods—
    the girls calling up
    each time you came
    to my bed—
    I fled
    and now I dream of you
    knowing you are
    dreaming of me,
    knowing we will always be
    each other’s muse, forbidden lover,
    witch and