Games of Statues

In some far country where they must speak French,
The slow rivers forever shove
Carrying, reversed in blue, debris of birds
Bound outward, like travelers out of love.

Over pale drinks, the roses of the sun fall out.
In white or vivid black, gossip is kept
As that old bell in that old tower
Keeps the hour for an annunciation.

Hand held, hand extended
Never was intended to reveal
What, at a station or a quay,
The lover seems already not to feel.

We keep the hour,
Hand touching hand in tentative embrace,
Mock the bewitchment of the evening,
And wonder if this could be the place.

While careful of the hunter and the plain,
Tigers ripple slowly through the rain
Terrible to transients south of Spain.

Hand held, hand extended
Cannot be depended on to part.
As, by a bus stop or a tree,
The lover says with silence, “Stay with me”

Talk to me now like Karen late one night,
Chewing her jewels and laughing at the silence:
“I cannot wait. I cannot hesitate.
“This time Fm certain there is no mistake.”

Absent from love,
We flicker out and die.
The bell performs.

Caught between death and death
We do not move.
Hand holding hand on reaching into shadow,
We fade with light.

While on the dusky lawn
from the indifferent flowers,
A swift deer, cast into iron,
Leaps forever into troubled darkness.