Читать книгу Love's Last Number - Christopher Howell - Страница 10

DESPERATELY COMPOSED

I wake on a small raft

and see her swimming away

with a cat under each arm

and wearing the sun

like a kind of sombrero.

Again I have not been chosen.

What will I drink, so far from land?

Where will I find flowers enough

to keep me breathing what

St. Francis called “the Perfect Air,”

the pneuma of hope’s tiny bells

announcing the hours of supplication

and grace?

She is far from me now, a speck

rising and dipping on the dazzle,

on a glinting of green trumpets that call

and call as Mahler drifts past

in a clef-shaped canoe and I toss him

a story in which a man dreams himself

beyond thought, beyond the farthest

point of land, where what he loves

has left him widened and cloudy,

the great sky somehow come

into his broken-fingered notation

turning slowly all night, lifting

as I do, waving to her, imploring

the angels to open themselves,

tune their instruments and pretend

that he is one of them, or they

more of him than he can count.