Gates of Ivory
In the land where we meet,
Under countless misty skies,
Where I have buried my heart
For your safekeeping,
Where you emerge in your half forgotten glory
And seldom remembered night,
The rubble of stone monuments awakens,
Each careful eyelid extending once more
Its inventory of love-stricken sight.
Your lyre sings notes of fire;
The hands absorbing bit by bit
Force of grace, one may call it,
Or simply the weight of light
Fire blooming on the lips
Tremors dancing in the eyes
Your presence there confounds them.
You never belonged in these desolate grounds.
You are too much;
Too many and too heavy to be borne.
All possibilities have disintegrated in your wake -
Damn those silvery, tender-honeyed sounds!
And as the sun opens up its hoard
Of vacancies and wretched days,
The figures gather round me
Where I sit weeping among the briar.
They, too, are familiar with the way
Your eyes falter and your skin flickers
Each time Morpheus takes the string into his hands
And with meditated, brutal compulsion,
Snaps the thing in half.
Your vision, now gone, still reverberates behind my eyes,
The haze almost lifted by the morning’s sobriety.
Yes, the crudeness very nearly kills.
And I fear my soul would’ve died long ago,
If it wasn’t for the fantasy from which I rise.
