Disenchantment

Is perhaps what happens
time and again until 

believing and loving
becomes hard work.

It must begin sooner 
than later in others

more frequently and less
to some, possibly why

it cannot be helped: being
lonely whether one knows it

or not; there are always
alternative companions:

a book, a dog, a date
and sometimes, shadows.

When memory is long

it is more difficult to forgive. I remember
the exact words you said 
inside the room 
where all the words we hurled at each other
lay with the shards of glass and mirror

remains of china, frames, memorabilia
what you wore and the colour of the sheets
the sound of begging
and finality, that immovable self-possessed weight.

The stolid words, once arrived, stay
no matter you sweep them with many vacations,
drowning them in tropical seas of laughter
into a forgetfulness; the words know

how to breathe darkly in subterranean waters
finding their labyrinthine way, resurfacing
as beasts of reason
for disbelief and anger 

unfaithfulness. 
You and I do not mention 

the lock is broken and I wonder why 
it cannot be said in plain words.
What we choose not to understand.
How memory gets in the way.
A hallway, a strait. You and I, different shores.

Dear friend with a spindle,

How do you do? I woke up sweating in an hour-less dark 
from last night's sleep from a dream I cannot tell about.
Better to say it was a dream of elephants, pink flamingoes
than others; it was humid in spite of the opened windows

Outlines of plane trees visible in the bright but waning
moon; the few days ago spent at a cove aptly named 
"Hidden" (in English, of course) by well-meaning locals. 
My tan darker now. My weeks here more less than more,

No matter I try not to count. Still, a few days before 
I had finally sent the latest collection of poems 
delayed at least half a year because-- 
A translation work and the editing of an anthology sat 

Beside me nights at the cove where I listened to the sound
of tide coming in and daybreak arriving; and watched locals
searching for seaweed and clams and other shells to eat.
A thirty-one year old woman with seven children 

Gave me a local story (the usual, all hearsay and no ending)
with an oil massage. I had slept in dreamless peace. 
The next day she sold fish from her neighbour's catch
and unripe mangoes from her neighbour's yard. 

It has been awhile since I've had a woman; this is such 
a sexist thing to say and I do not say it to anyone.
Like a sin meant for confession. To which I account
the restlessness. Do women also feel the same way? 

There was a poetry book launch and a literary gathering,
all fairly recently; another one tomorrow by a writer
in a local tongue I have come to love in spite of things--
such as not fully understanding it. The book am reading now

Is Atwood, a collection of her stories on inner lives (or 
tumult?) of women and their placid surfaces; their words
ballet dancers on tiptoes onstage. I find no words 
right enough for women. Again, must be a thing to say.

I am tired and my defences from my own self are down.
(You must be reading between the lines now.) 
I still continue to walk the dogs days and nights, though
I have ceased to run. One might say that in a way, 

I am sad (although it is hard to certainly say). Determine 
a more apt word when a month is now named on the calendar.
There is a net in my mind for catching sadness 
before it arrives, no matter it is visible from the shore.

My eldest dog has become more affectionate and I wonder
if it knows the leaving that is coming soon. Perhaps, 
this is only projection, as nearly everything else perceived.
At night, I memorise the humidity and the outlines made

By shadows and warmth. Her beautiful brown skin too,
the scent of it without perfume. I sense, as in any story,
there will be love making soon in the same wild abandon 
we used to do but--

the space between cities

The space between cities is a body of distance
hardly translatable into a map we can pretend
able to transverse by way of roads and rails,
ports and piers cohering so-called boundaries

of what is there and here and then and now as
east and west and north and south referring to
sun and wind and seasons, the way we attempt
landmarking passages if only to remember all 

places we've been, also those never been to 
except heard by name or gestured at in story.
The space between is body of distance, tunnel
lighted dimly: memory and dream, both palpable

to skin, real enough to hear the laugh from
a mind's photograph of one's own ageless self 
in a moment everlasting. Who else is there?
an entire library of snapshots handwritten in

cursive with names, some clearer than others, 
invoked often as bridges over which one's own 
mind and body travels, loop of a map a place
only in river-spaces crossing between cities.

I meant no harm

I meant no harm when I talked about the window pane
gentle to dust resting themselves a carpet on its lid
half open to sun, half closed by curtain sheer enough
letting in a pool of light on the floor where the dog
who meant no harm, settled patiently for breeze
and perhaps a bird chirp from outside the window pane.

And what about at the sacristy

Grandmother, when I was so much younger, brought me
To the sacristy. It was my birthday. A man was there.
He was wearing a gown, wearing a smile, and smelled
Of something else. I was supposed to ask for blessing
Only he was able to give, or so said Grandmother.
This was another lifetime ago, of course, although

I still do remember the door. And the wall. The shape
Of what was dark and deeply engraved on sides of pews.
Grandmother smelling of talc and old lipstick,
The old man with his voice thick as torso.
The noviciate I whispered with one night of songs
Who stepped back into the shadows in fear when told.

The bible has long been unread. The child on afternoons
Reading verses long gone. Still, these days I continue 
To refer what it is: poetry: the word turning flesh.
The old man who was called Father was a stranger.
Grandmother has stories I will never come to know.
I heard a bell outside the sacristy

And with the door I had come into behind me, the man
Turned his back towards a blind corner in the room
And disappeared. There is always another door.