We Meet

1. Before me, after me,

Drank my way.

Was as if of every way to not alone

the most mysterious was to drink it?

Went as far as... I thought but more than I thought I drank-

this talking together . . . amazed in it-

might this be where? might this be when?

Out as far as but our whiskey wisdoms came to such confusions

...and if the voices, if all the voices were my own-

no, it was only to myselves I went,

was only as far as to myselves and was not far enough to go.

Until out as far... as far as to a world . . . in the darkness of

helpless in it, was as if in mysteries never to be understood . . .

was as if in profundities of understanding nothing, nothing,

drank into a world... . for myselves and yourselves and the

others, .

together init... . was where was when . . . out into a largeness of

out into an ecstasy of... felt for each other a kind of love

until as far, was far enough to find but never to be lived in

if hands never more than almost touch,

if words never more than almost speak,

together was like alone and the largeness, the ecstasy, how slow-

ly it

was, is, between us, only these drunken distances. . . .

Or staring into them-to go as far as I can go, I return to: look.

On the wall... in a mirror . . . deep enough into it

and into my own aloneness is the way to not alone?

Because myselves as they come back to me bring with them the

others

and while every mystery glitters into the not mystery of it-

with the ones whose eyes will not leave mine:

look they tell me and across the distances of time, look I tell them

is it pink and pig that imagined itself profoundly perplexed?

is it stuporous? and degraded? that out there was ecstatic?

More miserable than mystic, here is a face, stares at a face-

before me, after me, is this not anyone . . .

staring into, staring out from, anyone's eyes?

2. All in the wanting to understand

And this? All in the wanting to understand it-

listen to it and sometimes into what it is

music sings us and is why we meet.

Or trying to write it into words, trying to read it from words-

as it rises into the sound of someone else's,

as it rises into the sound of my own wanting to understand it-

across countries of anywhere,

with centuries of death between us,

as ourselves but not as only ourselves, we think to each other-

we think to each other and in this we meet.

Or against space of space more vast-far from us, nearer to us,

here with his Chinese brush, one of us drew these flowering

branches.

And into the infinite whiteness of what is beyond them-

if something of us wants to go over, wants to go out-

are they to hold us back . . . are they to let us through ...

drawn as we are from bodies so small

the smallest drop of ink would be too large to show us,

drawn from who we are into what we are-

of what we are to ourselves and to each other,

of what we are, of what we are meant to be,

here there is nothing, nothing our physical eyes can see.

Until in a picture about whoever looks at it-

one with who drew it, one with the ones now as then drawn

into it,

our absence becomes a visible absence, becomes so invisible a

presence-

with before us what only at first seems to be an emptiness of space:

drawn into more than our own not being here,

drawn into everywhere the not understanding it:

the wanting, the struggling, this is to come to what in ourselves

is so pure-

in moments in which we infinitely give ourselves to it-

one with what out here is nameless, is formless,

how can we speak it? or show it? This vision of, this is to return to:

the stillness of it, the whiteness of it,

is of the spirit looking into . . . looking out from . . . itself.

3. Not in another time, not in another place

So monstrous the things done to them-

was it a year or a thousand years ago-

not dead, never dead, the way it was is how they come to us.

As there are nights when in every heightened pitch of wind

they scream from then to now the agonies of not their dead but of

oh God! their bodies racked . . . burned... broken...

Not dead, never dead. Nor is it only in the night they come to us.

For up into a bright morning-up goes a small brown thrush

and in a day of our indifference, we come upon them as suddenly

as above us, higher than we can touch him, the child hangs.

And this one! Oh God! Hanged here another prison camp Jew-

the father, the mother-of their own heaviness, around them

the air would have a large, would have an awful violence on it

and on that violence, in that violence, they could struggle to their

death

and from then to now would not so slowly die.

But so small and starved that of his own weight he cannot die!

This one? Oh God who for these hours is to let him hang here-

with his hands tied, with his feet tied-put here for the others to

look at-

put up here as high as he has seen at home branches hang and

he reached up his hand but could not touch the flowers on them,

could not touch the shining apples on them;

put up here-if up here he sleeps away from how they did it . . .

if he sleeps into at home the boy down there-

from down there, only the boy looks up at him

and he remembers but up up until he remembers into again

his neck, his head, his eyes. . . . And now he wakes in-

not in another time, not in another place,

again up here-in the monstrous endless agonies of it

now he wakes in, hangs in, is, this cutting burning choking. . . .

And when his face swollen and black begs us why?

When from the questionmark of his small body he terribly,

terribly and always more clearly questions us into it-

in a total goodness not God enough to take him down is where

we meet.

4. So vast the door

I thought to be alone.

But so vast the door,

so strange the dark sweep of it,

to let me in

it opens from here and from there,

it opens from now and from then.

Until from everywhere the gray streets of the day,

from everywhere into these black aisles of the night,

you ... and one by one the others...

come after me... or came before me.

And if I cannot see

the face you lift, the hands you put out;

if I cannot touch you, if I am never to tell you:

with my sight, with your sight, I see how the great stars burn

not to lighten the darkness but to show it.

And for the living who now from their death come to this place,

for the dead who yet from their lives return to it:

above us, around us, white figures of cloud

so quietly rise on the darkness . . . and move to each other,

gather to each other, all in so midnight an anguish of

their changing, their wraithlike, their own lost bodies . . .

as I think it with your thought, as you think it with mine,

across the countries, across the centuries,

of our eyes lifted, our hands held out:

are we the ones remembered, forgotten, never to be named,

are we the ones gone, the ones not yet come,

our shadows as they pass, pass into each other.

Until with the ones who wait in these black aisles of the night,

with the ones who walk in again these gray streets of the day,

as ourselves but not as only ourselves

we move into an understanding of... we move in the mys-

teries of...

how mortal the living, how immortal the dead.

There, here, then, now.