It is not with the lyre of someone in love that I go seducing people. The rattle of the leper is what sings in my hands. Jane Kenyon

Sunday, October 28, 2007

I M M E N S E

I M M E N S E
“There is no image I could invent
That your presence would not eclipse.”
From The Book Of Hours, Rilke I, 60


No one can know where you begin
Nor where your immensity ends.

You are so vast, when I chase
After you, you have already caught
Me, in my yesterday.

When I run away from you
You are my shadow in the sun,
My silhouette in the moon and there
In all my tomorrows, the first face
I wake up to.

You are the shadow when I lift
Up my palm to shield my eyes
From the always vertical sun.

But you are also the light stealing
Into the page of my conscience
When I write of closet secrets
In bony metaphors.

Your limitlessness is both alluring
And frightening, it has two poles,
Previous and to come, cloud shelter
And saber light and between them
The globe of all I can never
Imagine.