You close the door,
I know I am safe.
Always at evening I come,
the uncurtained window
welcoming the dark
the lights of the town distant
as flung stars.
We sit, the table’s length
between us. I place
at the centre tonight’s token
a sculpture in black ice –
not carefully chiselled
until it became what I wanted,
but a sculpture in the way
a piece of oak is
plucked from the bog.
Slowly I begin to speak.
You listen with all
of your listening –
each word a black tear
dissolving. The sculpture now a black
pool, I take my leave of you.
My going a whisper
in the empty corridor,
down the long carpeted stairs.
Outside I look up
at the rectangle of light
that is your window.
Always at evening I will come
until the evening of evenings
when I place on your table
a sculpture carved in alabaster
so white
I will speak no word.
It will shed no tear.
