It happens like this
Over and over:
A light breaks on the shore
Of a black water
Hemmed in by cliffs of red
Stone with faces
Carved into the faces, and you
See another face
–The face of the remembered–
Rising from the water,
Descending from the sourceless light,
And cannot call it out,
Because now you are the light breaking
Over the black water,
And you are the black water, and you
Are the face they make.
And then you wake up, and light
A cigarette,
And you are in time again, the world
Of time and outside
It is Tuesday, and early June,
And 1985.
And it would be your wedding day,
Were it three years ago;
And it would be your anniversary
Had she not left you . . .
But it is simply a Tuesday, in June,
In 1985,
And you have woken up alone to the life
You live alone,
And the workmen down the block are hammering
The last of the dream from you.
And what work will there be
For you today,
Dreamer whose dream the world
Of time has torn away?
—What task to occupy your hands
That tremble?
Only this resurrection of the grief
That sweats the drink
Out of you and makes you thirst
For more—
Makes you dress up to go out and drink,
Then undress to lie down.
And you will lie down, and you will be
The light breaking
Over the black water, and you will be
The black water.
