Dwelling even in the New South, & how
at our separate screens in twilight like in the highest boughs of an appletree
in spring when we were children—
we are happy. I ask—
Did one ver really walk across
a courtyard in Berlin?
Holding consciousness, a red precarious lantern?
On a winter’s night
we go to that
blue glow. an igloo, as though that will fulfill us now.
When you consider the gladiators of love,
.My sister,
it seems like a dream, your back pain:
One can’t push the river & I can’t pull
you here:
You never chose to come back:
Still, flickering behind my screen I can see the fierce adoration
of the ethereal
androgynous child.
When I consider
that it all may be an illusion
why do I tremble & lift it so gingerly which hands as it they’d found
the crack in the world
Athens Georgia, its seven hills, Seven like in Greece:
& the whole evening might shatter
like fractured paperweight snowball bleeding white into my hands.