Two Transatlantic Sonnets

I.

Listen to me, listen in your sleep
(These seven time zones are a chastity belt!)
In dawn’s blue window the breeze puffs up the curtain,
And the blinds jangle now and then.

Here it smells of the sea, the wind, slightly of dog.
You’ll turn over in your sleep – and the plane will pass the pole.
In the dark garage the sand we brought in from the beach
Last June is sprouting in your car like winter wheat.

The earth is a crumpled sheet.
The young man – a golden bee – is sleeping on it,
The lashes on his cheeks stiffen like streaks of humming sun.

He dreams of words from far away, of the touches  
sealed in them like honey sealed in honeycomb cells . . .
Except for them, the words have no meaning.


II.

A morning run down a back street like a canyon bottom,
The road around the corner clamouring like moved furniture –
Oh remember while you run how the night road to Boston, panting
With each passing headlight, stopped the breath in our throats.

There will be winter, there will be – I don’t know what,
Our bones will ache languorously with the sweet noise of dreams,
You’ll reach the end of the days that are empty of me,
And you’ll understand that time is just repeated space.

The light of a face is cast in memory as in a glass egg,
The year is burning down, lit at both ends
With the inextinguishable fire, pure as spirits, of reunion.

The young man leafs through a book filled with obscure words,
Moisture invades him, and his tender throat
Moves with the poems, in gulps and kisses.

TWO TRANSATLANTIC SONNETS