You Are Dark, Like Me
To my intimate—
you are dark, like me—
your eyes, like distant crystal stars,
beam upon the night’s dim archaic splendors—
luminating for a lapsing moment
all that has been lost—
the sunken fossils of dismal time
that now lie below, above, around us
in the inky obscurities of
childhood’s long forgotten hours
like a memory
of a shadow
of a dream.
*
we have known the tragic wisdom—
ancient we were at dawn—
the night’s secret graces
have kissed your hoary soul.
i do not mind if you,
my belated and beloved friend,
call me your sweet Promethe—
for i, fallen from a fiery sphere,
am cast upon this Olympic peak,
noble and austere—
and you, my shadowy Perseph,
ever radiant are
in your dreamful Hadean vale—
your beauteous head crowned
by the quivering violet blossoms
of this lonely twilit reach—
your fragrant bed made
yet unslept
in this sighing perpetual dusk.
*
we were born under the sign
of a remote and purple star—
the steps from
its diuturnal flame
to the florid sunswept acres
where we as children played
countable in truth
if not in fact.
*
after tides and eons passed,
ages and strata washed away,
we awoke to the wonder
that our Lethe, blackly flowing,
was the same—
the cold phosphor fire that burned
our tormented and our ardent heart,
the same—
the twinkling, tantalizing constellations
of unreachable titanic dreams
that seared our yearning eyes,
the same.
*
so ever we stare
upon the bejewelled heaven
in which we see each other’s
languidly longing face—
yours mine, as mine is thine—
and reveal as mirrors
the glory of these
eternal and significant stars—
our cosmic exile reflected,
in our returned and sparkling gaze,
as love.
*
my belated and beloved friend,
you see—
you are dark, like me.
Steven Holland
March 11, 2014
