Home >> Volume 2, Issue 02

Anniversary

William Luse

Were our two paths destined to cross,
Or do we live now, a moment’s held breath,
Brief prisoners of light and loss
And a universe born to perpetual death?
We follow each star in its ordered flight
As the tireless comet chases its tail
Down the long, dark tunnel of night
Where human voices cry and fail
In the vacuum to summon forth the hand
That hurled motion into Being. No sound
Pierces where the white galactic band
Around the cold finger of night is wound,
Like lovers locked in timeless embrace,
Yet strangers to each other’s face.

But were our two lives intended to meet
Before that joyful implosion of time
(At the point where light and darkness greet)
Inflated its womb to issue lovers who rhyme
Words that spatter the heavens, people the earth,
And open the graves of all who died,
Knowing this union yearns toward birth,
Admitting no death unsanctified?
As galaxies spiral, so the strand of life
Winds its secret through prolific ages,
Wedding matter and mind like husband and wife,
And taunting its suitors, the lovelorn sages
Wooing Word of that moment when the world began,
When Creation labored to end in man.

Our two names were written as one
Before that first scorching breath exhaled
One spark blown to a million suns,
Before that flame, and we from sin, paled
To cooler, darker stuff. Now by a dimmer flame
We see, for mind seeks Mind to bend
Its will; love rises, then falls to maim
One wounded by the many. We cannot mend
The heart of order - yet that which perfects
Us is come, we, who knelt to give our word
That, though false gods in lust abound, love selects
From the many, one. Had I not heard
Its promise in you, we’d have passed through
Time unknown,
The seven days’ work undone, that first breath
Never blown.

With how many swords have I pierced your heart
To learn in shame that again we rise,
That, of your hurt, forgiveness is the greater part?
In love and death we close our eyes
To enter darkness in hope of life,
That our children might bear the names of saints
Who cross our paths where the cross is a knife
Still piercing the world’s heart through,
Who still, with joy and the sons of morning, faint
So long as life’s reborn, and I in you;
So long as we lie down once more face to face,
Love - to the four winds stretched in endless embrace -
Closes eyes that open many to see
The One alone,
That I might see you were given to me,
My love - my one, my own.