I have waited for these words for so long,
and I'm grateful that you've brought them to me.
I don't deserve them — but you deserve them.
I waited in the glance where the rain falls down
when there seemed only falling rain;
now, the rain of such long waiting is over,
you bring these words to me,
and I am grateful.

We are running out of time.
Lullabies, alarms — it's a moment of decision.
We wait in the glance where the love runs down.
And of the hard universe, we break off
just a little piece — jasmine, or the way
forests grow on around us when you close your eyes.

Are you angry for Lot's wife's sake, do you pity her?
It's too cruel to be punished for a backward glance.
Though safety lay in the arms
of a ruthless god, all the past in ashes and salt…
Down the burning ladder of the fireman heart
we go, holding on and holding:
these are the lion words of summer,
and the lamb words of spring;
and they are gentler than I have ever been.

We're running out of glances.
And the waves crunch on the shore, an aqueous press
publishing so little we can ever read.
Among the five secrets of daybreak,
one is an anger of flowers,
one is only ever told to others —
and one is never told at all.

We're running out of texts, of secrets.
Say, we're holed up in this beach house,
on the run from the Law — tins, guns and cigarettes;
oil lamps, empty magazines and a bible.
The Law is the Flood:
you hear it in creaking whispers,
water under the veins — wolf water, such big eyes.
And how do we defend ourselves now
but with ourselves,
or with each other —
all we are left?

Axle grease and sapphires — we're low on them.
And the dapper gangster, threatening the Floridan hurricane
with his rod — Xerxes with a handgun…
Around us a weight of doom like a desert
grows, spider finger by spider finger: pressure on the cranium, and dust…
Disaster ticks, tiny, Death Watch, slow, eroders…

You are the greatest tenderness life has given me.
The flame wavers, and I look at you,
molten with darkness and more beautiful
the longer you are stretched out,
the fewer reserves you possess,
the more there is of you,
as, with every moment, there is less:
and I don't know how we bear this —
perhaps only others must bear this.

And Dorothy and little Toto, Ezekiel and Odysseus,
Orpheus, Noah, Hansel…
Deep in the woods was an edible house;
high in the whirlwind was a turning house;
under careless stars is a magnetic house,
and the fragile magnets of insects… Of lovers' hands…

Outside, the wind is picking the air clean,
leaving us short of supplies,
and our lungs grow sharp, like the blades of knives,
our breath seems to carve straight into bone —
one second — two seconds — three.

We're running out of space.
Out of diamonds for drills, out of land, water, stories.
Atoms of oxygen lie sparkling around us,
and the sea could still quench any journey —
but our kiss, the width of a throat,
must live on millimetres, oranges, darknesses and caffeine.

We are running out of memories.
Do you pity Lot's wife, are you angry for her sake?
But the desert is the place for prophets and dreams.
Behind us, in the distance,
there are destroyed cities, towers ablaze, walls down,
smoke eclipsing the sun —
and you walk towards me, small against the horizon,
the heat rippling flaking eucalypts — and I remember
a mystery of temperatures,
how some trees only shed their seeds
when they're on fire.

Your eyes are a quietness of light between two storms.
And then we, the love, are the storm.
And of the hard rain, we break off
just a few drops — acid, or the way
the line scored in copper prints one day as green,
the next as Java brown, and the last as crimson.

I pity Lot's wife, I'm angry for her sake.
Upon our shoulders, all that is burning begins.
The desert is the place for prophets and dreams,
and for us, the shining flood is the Law now.
Descartes' Arab is haunted, crossing the bright, wide sands,
looking for an earth in which to bury,
safe from harm, the shell and the stone he carries,
Euclid and Poetry. Deep in the dream,
he's searching for a grave of the human heart:
but should he find it,
who will find it?

We're running out of space, out of time,
even out of death.
And we thread the pearls of air through our lungs,
atom on atom, breath by breath —
but no one else will ever wear this necklace, and even we
will never find the clasp which closes it.

Acid and space, shorelines, moments and oranges —
where will we find shelter now?
Where on this earth?
We're running out of rain, out of words,
even out of love — and yet still we go towards
the source of danger — jasmine, or the way
forests grow on around us when you close your eyes.

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.

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