I know tonight that I'll never reach tomorrow.
And I won't meet you there.
And so the poem becomes unendurable, and I write it.
Tonight, I know that we won't meet tomorrow.

I love you because you are unprecedented,
and because your loneliness is incomparable.
While the rest of us sleep,
you are the only one who stays awake
for the morning to come to, and be,
and you feed it from your small breast
as if it was your own child.

I can't share in your loneliness,
not even with one of these words
dipped in milk and silence.
No one has been you before,
and the sound of their human voices falls like rain.

I have run out of warnings,
I have almost run out of shame.
I feel drugged and torpid and stupid —
sometimes you become so tired from sleeping
when you wake, it's just like another dream.

On Venus, the snow is metallic, and it falls constantly.
But on Earth, the ground is warm, and rises like bread.
I love you because you are so slender,
and because — unlike a thirst — you cannot be slaked.
You cannot rest and not be yourself,
and even the ocean will come to you, asking for peace.

The night is never alone now.
Someone is always looking up, watching fading stars.
You are a dawn that aches not to have broken,
you are only a dawn, and that's why I love you —
you cannot but break, and the wave of you
is always travelling through fresh space, making it new.

I've seen the darkness of the light that rests against you,
flows over your skin like smoke,
and sometimes I want to cry out a warning —
but how could I warn you against your own beauty
or order you not to be beautiful
or the storm not to be a storm?

On Venus, the snow is metallic, and falls constantly.
When the poem is endurable, I won't write it.
On Earth, we survive nothing: we are the only alone.
Night drowns in reflections of lime trees and traffic queues.
There are cars in the rain, and the flowers of headlamps on glass
are like sea-anenomes, or fireworks
molten in prime.

I know tonight that I'll never reach tomorrow,
and that we won't meet there.
Sometimes you become so dead from living,
when you rise, it's just like another death.

I've warned you, and I'm ashamed.
On Venus, the snow is metallic, and falls constantly.
Even as the poem, I can't be your beauty —
I can't be your loneliness, you are so alone.

I love the plain emptiness of my life in these days —
a Siberian openness —
my life is sweet and unbearable,
so when I speak, only you can bear my words,
not bitterly, to another world.

For us, the sun will never rise again.
The stars won't rise or set.
There will never be another dawn.
Tonight, I know that we won't reach tomorrow,
or meet there.

Everything will be lost, nothing will be replaced —
this is why I love you now,
under these great, open skies of time.
The storm will be a storm,
the wave will fall as a wave,
and you will be beautiful.

I know tonight that we won't meet tomorrow.
I love you because you are unprecedented,
because you walk through us as if through the day,
and around you, our human voices fall like rain.

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.

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