Approach
As in your small boat you approach the island,
Its caves and cliffs and searocks never known,
The sun at your back, the wave almost silent,
There is no need to call on suffering,
There is no need to say how love has grown
Or not grown in the moment of its falling.
You smell the beach's mounds of rotting seaweed,
The mountain's herbs, the resin of your fears
Sweet too – and that perhaps is something new.
The white salt glistens over everything
Like hope. Of course there is no hope, though it
Is not a simple trick.
As you approach –
With all the diffidence of repetition –
The island of your sorrow and disgrace,
The woman and the garden and the house
Develop in your memory too fast,
A silver fall of drops from a cave's wet roof
That forms stalactites in a moment's blinking.
Page(s) 37
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