Robert Duncan




Passage Over Water

We have gone out in boats upon the sea at night,   
lost, and the vast waters close traps of fear about us.
The boats are driven apart, and we are alone at last   
under the incalculable sky, listless, diseased with stars.

Let the oars be idle, my love, and forget at this time
our love like a knife between us
defining the boundaries that we can never cross   
nor destroy as we drift into the heart of our dream,   
cutting the silence, slyly, the bitter rain in our mouths   
and the dark wound closed in behind us.

Forget depth-bombs, death and promises we made,   
gardens laid waste, and, over the wastelands westward,   
the rooms where we had come together bombed.

But even as we leave, your love turns back. I feel
your absence like the ringing of bells silenced. And salt   
over your eyes and the scales of salt between us. Now,   
you pass with ease into the destructive world.   
There is a dry crash of cement. The light fails,   
falls into the ruins of cities upon the distant shore   
and within the indestructible night I am alone.