If ever you marry, remember,
there is a festival of light
on every island, a garden
where the women gather in white
to turn to the sound of a king's song.
If you ask why the queen is silent,
the dance is ended.
Then only a boy on the cross of roads
can find the blue stone of wisdom,
the lourie feather of love in the flesh.
You ask me to enter the chamber and sing,
groan, inexpressibly, groan, ascend,
descend, leap from the ash of your pillow
to the calm light of your grave.
I am too certain of the measure of these days.
Sojourner and guest, I continue;
I polish new stones from old;
I am at hail's end in the deep wings
of the city; I would return to the feast.
I continue.
I have learned to see a seed as act,
a word as a gift of perfection.
The hand that slips the abundant
seed into the darkness of earth
extends from my body.
I have always wanted to ask-
who speaks, who moves and who returns
when the I is hidden in the paradigm?
I have learned to accept my prescence as act,
my act as a placement of time.
I hold now, by my presence,
to have held the first light,
and, in my imperfection,
to have held the vision of my own absence.
This is the one you marry, so lightly.
Each figure, now, twins and untwins us.
We can say we can be brought, in white,
to the marriage bed, under a reed's bass,
and settled, limb to counter limb,
with our desert's necessities.
I wait, as always, at the crossroads
to be led into the city.
I desire your double journey.
I ask your name.
I continue.