Lie still now

while I prepare for my future,

certain hard days ahead,

when I’ll need what I know so clearly

          this moment.

 

I am making use

of the one thing I learned

of all the things my father tried to

          teach me:

the art of memory.

 

I am letting this room

and everything in it

stand for my ideas about love

and love’s difficulties.

 

I’ll let your love-cries,

those spacious notes

of a moment ago,

stand for distance.

 

Your scent,

that scent

of spice and a wound,

I’ll let stand for mystery.

 

Your sunken belly

is the daily cup

of milk I drank

as a boy before morning prayer.

 

The sun on the face

of the wall

is God, the face

I can’t see, my soul,

 

and so on, each thing

standing for a separate idea,

and those ideas forming the constellation

of my greater idea.

And one day,

when I need to tell myself something intelligent

about love,

 

I’ll close my eyes

and recall this room and everything in it:

My body is estrangement.

This desire, perfection.

Your closes eyes are

my extinction.  Now

I’ve forgotten my

 

idea.  The book

on the windowsill, riffled by wind…

the even-numbered pages are

the past, the odd

-numbered pages, the future.

The sun is

God, your body is milk…

 

useless, useless…

your cries are song, my body’s not me…

no good…my idea

has evaporated…your hair is time, your

          thighs are song…

it had something to do

with death…it had something

to do with love.