Second Sight

There are many paths that we walk along, thinking
that what is coming up next will certainly fall
into a sequence, an order, a final position.

Music, the wicked and inexhaustibly profound
syntax of experience, buds indiscreetly
out of each step--to stop this is impossible.

“Her hand in mine” brings me back to many places
that you have never been, but which you have seen
once before this. Once after this, you too

will jump through the open night with your hands
set free of mine, and I yours, and your body will rise and fall
again and again upon the waves, clear enough to see what was before--

though you can still feel my touch, and I yours,
though you may not move toward someone else nor back to me,
nor to a grave, empty bed under whose covers you forget both of our names,
you are still not here, nor am I.

Where is this place? Where we met for some time?
It is left, alive, undergoing change. It is wherever we go,
a shadow turning and facing us.