You Are Dark, Like Me

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