Eternal Enemies: Poems

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June.

Passerby, open your eyes.

14. AT DAWN

The world’s materiality at dawn—

and the soul’s frailty.

Music heard with you

at home or in the car

or even while strolling

didn’t always sound as pristine

as piano tuners might wish—

it was sometimes mixed with voices

full of fear and pain,

and then that music

was more than music,

it was our living

and our dying.

In the barracks’ quiet,

in the silence of a summer Sunday,

the swallows’ shrill cry.

Is this really all that’s left

of human speech?

The small crowd by the American consulate

ripples like a jellyfish in water.

A young Dominican strides down the sidewalk

and passersby yield piously.

I’m at home again, silent as a Buddhist.

I count the days of happiness and fretting,

days spent seeking you frantically,

finding just a metaphor, an image,

days of Ecclesiastes and the Psalmist.

I remember the heatstruck scent of heather,

the smell of sap in the forest by the sea,

the dark of a white chapel in Provence,

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