The road we took

As you sleep in another room,
my words pace out the night.
I write. As usual, we fail
to coincide.
The cycle of insomnia has recommenced,
so there is a long void ahead
in which I can retrace our steps.

Our dialogue began in poetry,
but went astray. Somewhere
between airports, crossing
borders, the dynamic changed.
It doesn't matter, now the longed-for
grail has come within your grasp -
worlds have been sacrificed
for less, and are we not
the best of friends?

There was that journey on a bus,
returning from the Isle of Dreams -
images kept surfacing with strange
intensity - hallucinogenic visions
of our passage to a safer haven,
interspersed with fragments,
a montage composed of memories -
motifs from the tropics, childhood,
juxtaposed with northern winters,
Polynesia and the Urals, ancient Athens
and Kuzmin: Форель разбивает лёд
evolving into theme.

The next scene I recall was Epidaurus,
at the Odeion, beneath the mulberry trees
whose fruit kept bleeding underfoot,
while a tethered stallion tossed his mane
and lifted nervous hooves, tail flicking
as summer gadflies goaded flanks and eyes.

After gold and azure summer
drained its cup in the Aegean,
winds of change bore down on us,
I sensed their icy edge with dread,
but you were all for moving on,
while I was dining with the dead,
in colloquy with voices from the shades.
We walked in circles over the Acropolis,
the city like a fallen woman
sprawling at our feet. You filled
my mind with crazy possibilities,
and we lived anticlockwise
for a time, at peace...

My visions of oneiric journeys wither
on the vine of time, but yours will mellow
into vintage wine. Here in the house
of brooding discontent we talk
and laugh and dine, but we are
worlds apart, estranged from all
forms of desire, in thrall to separate
monitors, careful to never coincide.

I celebrate the journey
we set out on once so hopefully,
and you are not awake to see me
weeping for the dream. The road
diverges soon, though we pretend
we haven't noticed yet, and neither
of us has the heart to travel on alone.

 
 
for V.

`````````````````````````````````````````
This is an old poem, from September 2003.
Much has changed since then; the vessels
with their perishable, fragile cargoes
have moved on, so now the poem
once written out of sorrow
is just one more poem...