Two Rivers

    For P.C.

“We are near, Lord,
near and at hand.”
    -Paul Celan


Within the green sunlight bobbing on our Danube,
I cradle this image of you,
tormenting death with a stick
as if dead city dog,
soaked in its black milk and shining like a pearl,
drinking daybreak with huge, blind eyes.

Our shared sun, in turns threadbare and calculating,
begging our souls for shape,
then tuning our songs of mankind
into dirges of sleeping gray hands
harmonized by gold lutes, torn flags,
gods pulling with equal might
on both ends of time.

Then the ambiguous seed we once were
growing names, and you rebelling
and finally grieving,
what inevitably deserts
and the love we feign
to fasten the void.

I imagine the love that never sleeps,
silent faith, charred cinders of blessings,
and the wilderness below the surface
gleaming from that last glimpse
before your leap
into the Seine.