Look how appropriately incomplete
I am: I never carry a pocket mirror.
My skin takes the light.
I don’t know where it goes.
Maybe it passes right through me.
Maybe it follows me,
making me easy to follow,
for there’s no mistaking
what it is: a life all right,
and my own, but to what end?
I can’t work, much less love.
Love, there’s no mistaking the word
for it: once you’ve driven the
wild breath in, you’ll have
a little glass hammer,
perfectly useless. This,
the flint of all things!
They say one off another
we light our way with
what’s been lit for us.
While my own dark risk
is not to grow, not
until I’ve given myself to a leper,
until he’s touched my soul with his body
and together we work like the missing part
of a crossword.
Work, of which I wasn’t able!
Love and work. Lieben, Arbeiten.
The little glass hammer is ringing!
There’s another word for work
another word for love
a language with one word for both
and a country with no words at all.
Look at the men and women
unable to understand: