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                    The Divorce

At first it was only an imperceptible quivering of
    the skin -
'As you wish' - where the flesh is darkest.
'What's wrong with you?' - Nothing.  Milky dreams
of embraces; next morning, though,
the other looks different, strangely bony.
Razor-sharp misunderstanding.  'That time, in Rome -'
I never said that.  A pause.  And furious palpitations,
a sort of hatred, strange.  'That's not the point.'
Repetitions. Radiantly clear, this certainty:
From now on all is wrong. Odourless and sharp,
like a passport photo, this unknown person
with a glass of tea at table, with staring eyes.
It's no good, no good, no good:
litany in the head, a slight nausea.
End of reproaches.  Slowly the whole room
Fills with guilt right up to the ceiling.
This complaining voice is strange, only not
the shoes that drop with a bang. not the shoes.
Next time, in an empty restaurant,
slow motion, bread crumbs, money is discussed,
laughing  -  The dessert tastes of metal.
Two untouchables.  Shrill reasonableness.
'Not so bad really.'  But at night
the thoughts of vengeance, the silent fight, anonymous
like two bony barristers, two large crabs
in water.  Then the exhaustion.  Slowly
the scab peels off.  A new tobacconist,
a new address.  Pariahs, horribly relieved.
Shades growing paler.  These are the documents.
This is the bunch of keys.  This is the scar.
                  _______________

                            --Hans Magnus Enzensberger

 
Sticks and Stones are hard on bones,
Aimed with angry art,
words can sting like anything
but silence breaks the heart.

 

The Expanding Universe: Two Views

I
But if Everything's moving, then
"fixity" doesn't exist.  The room
in which we now lie
races through space; the moon's
orbit skids into in-
finity like a pitched horseshoe
and I who will love you
always won't always be I
nor you you . . .

II
Let it move, then.  Even so,
some Brake held it back
 long enough to produce Space-
and-Time and for those to fill
with all Astronomy
and History, keeping track
of certain fidelities:
Launce and his dog; Orion and his;
the noon's and the night's face;
even though itself, although
too often centrifugal,
condemned nonetheless
to continuity.

                        --Peter Kane Dufalt

 
   
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