41

Two Can Travel for the Price of One

Our little hour under the bright stars does fail

but we despair if we dwell on death.

How clench our courage between rotting teeth

like a grass blade and flute a song

before the strong heart cracks for all desires?

Again I recall you—the moment lost—

your face, for once, upturned to the gift of trust,

your hair windblown with salt air and dew

and haloed by the April moon

rising to starboard above the trembling lane of waters,

and I would ask now, perhaps forever:

Why pretend you are blind?—I cannot understand,

I cannot understand at all.

But the dark caves that were your eyes

would not have known, nor the reiterated stars

drowned in your tears.

You trusted me not to ask.

You sit there forever, as a faint wind flows

from west to east while the stopped world turns backward

and your small boat motionless,

even by day,

on the stilled sea.