Manthano

A poem called The Words I Know
Came to talk to me today.
I knew him by the flakes of snow
That glistened in his locks of hay.
Maple keys and shattered glass
And bolts of water were his coat.
His shoes were books I breathed like gas.
His gloves were thoughts I never wrote.
He walked with wind; he knelt and rain
Spilled from his pocket on my shoe.
His smile was my secret pain.
His eyes were everyone I knew.
And pumping through transparent skin
The first word of my infancy,
The word I cannot know again,
His heart he will not give to me,
Resounded like a midnight plunge
Through ice and through the afterglow.
Around his neck Golgotha’s sponge
To ease the things I had to know
Of terror and of shock and awe,
Of sea and sand’s insurgency
On lines men draw, the tragic flaw,
And the far side of adversity,
The wings of dragons and of doves
Within a single locket held,
The secret testament of love,
And the weight of all the world.
Epiphany and paradox.
Dust and inspiration.
The shadow when adventure knocks,
And its seismic transformation.
And guilt grew closer than my skin.
And sorrow vital as my bones
To see him look at me again
More stricken and more overgrown.
I hadn’t thought myself unscathed;
I’d not believed myself immune
To seeing dreams arranged in graves.
But the shadow met my gaze so soon.
Who had moved the other so?
Are you changed by me or I by you?
One answered- which, I do not know.
“I could not stop if you asked me to.”