Page Title

III. H E A R T ' S M A R K E T

In memoriam

Tirso Cano 1968 - 1984

Jose Colmenares 1935 - 1984

After

Dreams of death, now you are both

dead, are full of a panting and pounding not

there when terror was waking.

This fear is fast, does what it must

in minutes before I awake and regain, in gasping

minutes, breath and knowing

it can't be death in life, it can only

be dreaming: in life you are already lost. Relief

washes me back to sleep,

wondering only briefly: which

of the two of you rode with me this time? Who

was driving if we were riding?

Ash

Dear flesh, dear mind, dear spirit, oh dear love,

in the depths of myself blind monsters know

your presence, and are angry...

"Canzone"

W.H. Auden

The blind monsters in the depth of myself,

that accepted no substitute down the years

for the cry from the fire that answered them out of you

at last received their delayed miracle: at last

(the burning boy a quarter-century gone)

their eyes were opened on the dead, the living,

the insane, and on you, the missing presumed alive.

Dear flesh, dear mind, their anger was not consumed.

I remembered others always after you, and you running

(but looking behind); you fallen, part devoured,

up again, off again. Don't look back! I cried.

But you loved to be pursued. By now the man was ash

of that intrigued, chancy boy, wanting to know

what everyone wanted: but playing fair,

telling us all it wasn't there. (Those blind presences

knew what was there, and they wanted nothing else.)

Strange to see finally, knowing you hadn't known,

the power at the core of that fire that kept you flaming

and kept us coming to warm ourselves at you,

unable to choose what we were free to love.

I'd have done anything, died for you -- left you.

But after I knew the answer you looked for then,

I was afraid of the burning for you; I told myself

surely the fire was not more luminous than this ash.

Missing

Missing you all my life, your absence

like a missing limb changed all my moves.

Missing eyes that give presence

as full of life as fruit; missing lids

that know how much to let escape;

missing you all along I look in other

Continue In Love With the Angel