Or agony the same words must be said,

Or the raging moon will darken in the sky.

The night grow still. The winds of dawn expire.

And if I’m wrong, it cannot be by much.

We know our own existence came from touch,

The new soul summoned into life by lust.

And love’s shy tongue awakens in such fire—

Flesh against flesh and midnight whispering—

As if the only purpose of desire

Were to express its infinite unfolding.

And so, my love, we are two lunatics,

Secretaries to the wordless moon,

Lying awake, together or apart,

Transcribing every touch or aching absence

Into our endless, intimate palaver,

Body to body, naked to the night,

Appareled only in our utterance.

THE APPLE ORCHARD

You won’t remember it—the apple orchard

We wandered through one April afternoon,

Climbing the hill behind the empty farm.

A city boy, I’d never seen a grove

Burst in full flower or breathed the bittersweet

Perfume of blossoms mingled with the dust.

A quarter mile of trees in fragrant rows

Arching above us. We walked the aisle,

Alone in spring’s ephemeral cathedral.

We had the luck, if you can call it that,

Of having been in love but never lovers—

The bright flame burning, fed by pure desire.

Nothing consumed, such secrets brought to light!

There was a moment when I stood behind you,

Reached out to spin you toward me … but I stopped.

What more could I have wanted from that day?

Everything, of course. Perhaps that was the point—

To learn that what we will not grasp is lost.

COME BACK

Come back, come back to me—now that I’m old—

not love, but you, the shadow of love, fashioned

from quiet and quotidian things, glimpses

of rooftops, alleyways, of open windows

where lovers first espy the imminence

of their own loving, or from sickroom skylights

with their careworn parade of painful days,

the shadowy refuge that vanishes

the way a wild duck, shot in mid-flight,

drops suddenly to vanish in the marsh,

just a few feathers drifting in the air:

I am a shimmering reality

that has no purpose,

unless you return, love, shadow of love,

o cherished sleep, and grant me your repose.

(From the Italian of Carlo Betocchi)

AN OLD STORY

Our story is an old story, the tale of two,

Who met in our feverish, infallible youth

And woke transfigured in a world made new.

We walked through gardens of such stark perfume

That merely breathing left us drunk for days.

We rolled in brambles with our skin unbruised.

We shined in sunlight and in moonlight glowed,

As radiant as angels drawn by Blake.

How could such fiery brightness not explode?

The aspens shimmered, and each blade-like leaf

Slashed at the slopes until the freshets bled.

The mountains were not larger than our grief.

I don’t know why I tell myself this story,

Except that it is spring again outside