“
Now reading
The Page
As I swing in the hammock of twilight
Leafing through the week,
I find a page two pages thick:
Two days fat without a night
Between, two nights long
Without a sun intervening -
No matter, they stick.
Never shall I forget
How you climbed out of a dream, a morning
Dream, to outsit the day;
How there on the page so upright
And severely for forty-eight
Hours in capital letters
You sat typed and taut.
And there was no moon, no sun,
No grass, but a rocking chair
Suspended on the page and here,
With your love all gone
From your eyes: a ribbon
In your fingers, you sat against a backdrop
Of stillborn air.
And I called you as you rocked
To and fro, eyes astare
Like wood. O wherein had you looked
For the why of us, what book?
PAUL GOODMAN
Was not our love enough
To survive against our needlessness?
We all are but guests.
O graven on the page,
Love's entrail a-dangling,
Once more guest out the morrows
Split to darks and lights by lovers only.
My salt-caked cheek awaits
Expectantly your brush of kiss
To leaf us both to night.