Naked feet on bare floors, elbows on the sill,
hands cup the lines of a jaw, mirror
connecting the stars above the babbling towers
whose shadows cloaked our daylight,
beyond the reach of
hands cupping the lines of missing faces. Eyes
reach anyway, holy useless as first songs
and the first games in the garden,
out and out with the tops of our artifices
but not always the endless lines
of bodies in skies
where the children of gardens
still hide in the dark folds where invisible stars become
— and a new one, here
— in the quiet depths behind these sigh songs,
the lines of ourselves slipping,
and no names yet for the unborn
when we never named the dead
— in the depths behind these breaths,
reaching lines toward letters,
ever into some beginning,
say the word.
