It was such a beautiful evening,
the spring dusk,
the softness of the streetlamps,
and the way the street led me
to a 17-year-old boy
who had light in his veins,
and who gazed into that pale,
white-haunted indigo
feeling the air open up,
tender and red, the dark
gash, where the lips
of the future
kissed him.

Those lights in his veins.
And I am so very tired tonight,
I have — what — maybe another hour
of wakefulness to write in.
After the sea of the world
has washed me up
here, serene and exhausted,
salt in my hair
and all the past
drying on my skin.

It is not that something is missed, or lost:
it is something which cannot be gained, or found.
It cannot be possessed, or owned,
conquered, or won.
But it grazes the heart, sometimes:
and the heart grazes it.

In a world all touch,
who is left untouched;
in a world all loneliness
who is not alone?
I speak of something which is not
to be captured, or enshrined,
it is not literal at all
but as I say:
there was salt in my hair,
and on my skin
the past was still drying.

Forgive me if this poem seems abstruse:
it seems an odd way
to celebrate so lovely an evening
with a line of words so hazy
their subject melts, like the streetlights
in with the moonlight,
and my path home through the dusk
can only be suggested.

I am so tired,
I have only minutes left now.
And yet, I want to write, and write.
And you might ask: of what?
What is it you want to write?
What is your subject?
But I would simply reply:
he had lights in his veins.

Perhaps there are moments when all of life
hangs and drifts in a loose solution
or when a person
prickles with revelations,
and the spring evening
gathers around, like guests at a party,
listening to one of their number
who has hushed them with the promise
of something worth hearing
but is yet
to speak.

The dead are formed, but the living
rush by them.
Perhaps it was a moment
like Pierre, or Prince Bolkonsky —
(was that his name? —
Prince Andrei's name?) —
I forget, or am unclear) —
but a moment
so fresh,
the dew still on it,
when the soldier lay down,
on his back, in the grass,
and the shipwrecked woman, on her belly,
rose up
out of the seaming foam.

There is a Madonna of the fishermen,
a statue on the ocean bed
who waits among the currents, arms outstretched,
gathering the tides;
and on a certain day
divers garland her with flowers,
a figure who may be reached
by prayer or scuba.

On every other day of the year, I guess,
she is unseen
but stands upon the sands
like a heart.
Well: so he had lights in his veins.
And at dusk, one spring,
he thought he was walking home
through a white-haunted
indigo darkness.

What happened next, I cannot say —
a life, of course.
Now I must sleep.
For any person
a moment is a grave.
And I hate to leave
the Prince lying there
in his so-Russian rigor —
but I'm so tired.
In the morning, I will wake,
and rise, and work.

And for those who wait
for the luminous conclusion
I bid you
goodnight.

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.

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