in it that day, in the capital
of his early province—how could we
have not been in it, in our hotel bed, in the
cries through the green grass-blade. Then, knees
weak, I though I was in it when I said
would he mind going out into the town on his own.
I knew there was sorrow there, byways, worn
scrimshaw of a child's isolateness.
And who had pulled us down on the bed for the
second time that day, who had
given-taken the kiss that would not
stop till the cry—it was I, sir, it was I,
my lady, but I thought that all we did
was done in love's sight. So he went out by himself
into the boyhood place of deaths
and icy waters, and I lay in that bowl-of-
cream bed purring. The room was like the bridge of a
ship, windows angled out over the harbor—
through thick, smooth Greenland glass I
saw the port city, I curled and sinuous'd
and slow-flicked my most happy tail, and
farther into cold fog
I let him go, I lay and stretched on love's
fucking stretcher, and let him wander on his
own the haunt salt mazes. I thought
wherever we were, we were in lasting love—
even in our separateness and
loneliness, in love—even the
iceberg, just outside the mouth, its
pallid, tilting, jade-white
was love's, as we were. We had said so. And its inner
cleavings went translucent and opaque,
violet and golden, as the afternoon passed, and there were
feathers of birds inside it preserved, and
nest-down and maybe a bootlace, even
a tern half shell, a baby shoe, love's
tiny dory as if permanent
inside the bright overcast.
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