POETRY

We Draw Our Own Curtains of Night Across the Sky

A poem

Keisai, Eisen (Japanese, 1791–1848). Pomegranates and Birds, ca. 1840. Wood block color print, 8 1/2 x 6 11/16 in. (21.6 x 17 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 16.551

We leave the ground,
slow ascent with
mad flapping wings.

Climbing together,
lifted upwards on
winds of privacy,

we draw our own
curtains of night
across the sky.

Through ancient,
unblinking marbles
for eyes,
we can see forever
into each other,
and it carries us higher,
up to where the horizon
is curved like a bow
when the string is drawn
as tight as it will go.

At the top of the sky,
we shoot across the heavens
like fire-tipped arrows,
and begin our descent,
gliding on spiral breezes
of disbelief.

The world slowly
becomes real again,
and as we touch the ground,
daylight pierces the
newly-parted curtains.