I Ask Myself How Is It I Am Loved

I ask myself, how is it I have come,
Still so far from the sunset of my days,
(I pray tis not yet sunset on my days)
Unto some chamber in the maze of life
Where it is possible to hear you say
'I miss you' and 'I feel your absence in
The times when just to have you close nearby
Would bring me rest from grieving.' (Sunset knows
How much indeed I need rest from grieving)
Not lust, not appetite, not anything
That narrow press-lipped matrons warned against,
But only that you want me by your side.

I ask myself, how is it I have met,
Still nowhere near the sunset of my days,
(And if this be the sunset of my days,
I pray the sunset last for decades yet)
With that rare breed of love that poets would
Have you believe is something only glimpsed
But once in a millennium, if that.
The kind that is an ever fix'd mark
Yet does not mind when I am less than fixed,
Yet still is thrilled when I am fixed again.
That when I once had nowhere else to turn
(The sunset knows, not very long ago)
No one to care that I should live or die,
It, by so caring, unexpectedly,
Reminded me--this is what life feels like.
This is a home. And this a family.
And all these things are not exclusively
Reserved for other people. You as well
Shall pass through these before you pass the gates
Of utter west, and in the sunset rest.
(I pray that when I to that sunset pass
I find your path continues by my side.)

I ask myself, how much you asked yourself,
For I have not the heart to ask you plain,
(But, sunset knows, must hide it in a verse.)
How long, oh lord, how long did you endure?
You knew, I know, the windless desert air
Where sun is cruelty, and never sets,
And teaches but one lesson--Nobody
Ever will help you, ever will defend.
Did you despair as deeply as did I?
Was it as much impossibility
For you, when that intolerable sun
Proved one day to be setting, as for me?
(I prayed for sunset long before I knew
There was such thing as sunset.) If I traced
With disbelieving fingers all the scars
That cruelty and caution long since etched
Across your nerves, would I find them a match
For those that throb upon my hands and side?

I do not ask myself, if I deserve,
Who knows how near the sunset of my life
(And if this were the sunset, I would be
Content with such a sunset to my life)
To have you. It may be that I do not.
There's no 'deserve' to gentle rain, or sound
Of trees against the wind, or candlelight
In winter, or the distant salt sea smell.
What pedant hypocrite would think to ask
"Do you deserve the air?" I have the air.
I have the smell of sea. I have the flame
On winter nights. I have the sound of trees.
I have soft blessed rain. (And sunset knows
I have, all undeserving, the sunset.)
Whatever else you ask yourself, my love,
Ask not if you deserve me by your side.

I often ask myself, when others come
After has passed the sunset of our days
(Not even sunset knows who they shall be)
And we are gone, what archeology,
What mastery of lore, what history,
Could make them understand what you and I
Once built here, for eachother? What traces
Do such as you and I leave by the way—
No family name, no bloodline, no heirloom,
No genealogy, no monuments.
(I pray the sunset, one day to accept
Me of his bloodline, but that does not count.)
What kind of breadcrumb trail could lead the eyes
Of future ages, in the maze of life,
To find the chambers where I was with you?
A dog collar, too many worn-out shoes,
Some soda cans, some scraps of poetry.
If they can guess, from these, the kind of life
And home and family you were to me,
They're wiser far than any age before.
But then, I ask myself, what do I care?
I do not live for them.

                                   I live for you.
When you shall say that just to have me near
Would bring you rest from grieving, let me be
At once and without question by your side
From now until the sunset of my days.
And aye, beyond. (May sunset will it so.)

I Do Not Fear A Season Without Hope

I do not fear a season without hope:
Catastrophe upon catastrophe,
When love is every day a little bit
Made more a crime. When cruelty becomes
The only virtue men know how to praise.
When all but easy speeches are forbid
To comfort cruel men. I do not fear
The very nearing chance that any day
May be the day I go to meet my gods
And this, the only life I’ll ever have,
Comes to an end. And no more do I fear
The fear that any season without hope
Must needs be lived under and underneath.
Awake with fear, washing fear, dressing fear,
Breaking my fast with fear, reading of fear
And hearing of it every long, long hour
Before I go to bed with fear again.
I do not fear the man I must become
To survive any season without hope.
I have been him before. I lived long years
Before I ever learned the taste of hope.
Determination in despair is hell,
But still, a hell whose territory I know
By memory. I know how comfortable
I can myself make there: not very much,
But still, enough to last until the day
When I know how to walk the way back out.
But oh, I fear the shock of hope again
When does this season pass at weary last.
How fragile does determination grow,
How crusted, crystalized, and corroded,
When for a season soaks it in despair?
The lightest touch sufficeth then to break.
How can I tell, when hope returns at last
That all my bones and soul, long used to weight,
Will not with the too sudden lightening
Of burdens, shatter? Scatter into dust?
Thus do I fear a season without hope,
Lest by surviving I become unfit
To live, when hope is possible again.

Tornado Watch

I smell it, sometimes, in between the leaves,

Or in the over-the-horizon rain,

Or under sunset colored shadow hills.

It comes like icy nausea. It runs

Along the spine as would a lone raindrop.

It silences all noises but itself.

It is not wind, or if it is, it is

A wind that does not move through mortal spheres.

It lifts no flags. It fills no sails. It can

Be stopped by neither wall nor weatherstrip:

There is no shelter from it. Though I have

But felt it ever as the gentlest breeze,

But, oh, the gentlest finger of that breeze

Does make me dread the hurricane. There is

A certain kind of wind, in every clime,

That sings the autumn’s last recessional,

That gives last rites to all the natural world,
That ends and undermines all lingering works

Which then must lie abandoned and unmade

For other ages to perhaps remark

‘What folly were they after, that they built

So shapelessly, and so abortively?’
The herdsman brings his cattle to the byre.

The reaper speeds the scythe along the corn.

For whatsover that wind finds not yet

Well sheltered, well secured, is wholly lost.

And it is not that wind. But it is close,
As men say tongue when they mean speech, or heart

When they mean love. So I when I say the wind

Is rising, and I fear a coming storm

I hope you know what kind of fear that is,

What otherworldly tempest I look for,

What ruins I anticipate that we

Mayhaps must learn to live in. All the world

That humankind has built is as the leaves

That spring exhales, that summer raises up,

That autumn dries into exhaustion’s hues,

And comes the wind to sweep them all away.