SLOW MOTION

SLOW MOTION

SLOW MOTION

You await me always at the end of my sentences.
You are like death: I am
always moving towards you,
an infinity of inches.

Surfaces count. I will get to know you
in blindness and slime, like a slug
when it knows the earth at last,
that is, from belly up.

There is a moment, not due yet,
when I shall turn you into me
with a gentle, inward gesture.

Now that I have taught my eyes to read
my own meandering script
I see that I carried your name in legible letters
from the bloody slew of birth.
It was a long time coming.

There is something about time
which I must describe here with my hand
clutched round a pen: It can happen to one
in the shape of a man.