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.