I caress your sunswept hair,
the unknown skies of your cheeks.
I kiss your lips, hands and feet.
I talk with you as God and friend.
You talk to me as lover and son.
I drown in the tides of your smile.
And I stand like a grinning idiot
before the sun of your eyes.

"But it's only a photograph," they say.
Struck dumb, I look at them, I look at you.
Then I see you wink like a night of stars.

I'm so relieved.
For too long I believed I had to give away
everything to lie closer, nearer to you.

So I gave up
swearing and drinking and smoking
eating and smiling and hoping
even sleeping with the lights off,
but I came no closer, no nearer to you.
I gave up living, then I gave up dying
I gave up loving life and loving myself
even watching pretty girls go by,
but I came no closer, no nearer to you.

Can't you see that
I wasn't born to take care of my health
or to stack stones on top of one another
nor to weigh myself against gold and silver,
I was born only to be your lover.

But yesterday
while watching a pretty girl walk by
I realised that it's not what I give up
or away or what I give to you that counts,
but how little or how much I take for myself.

This disease you put in my head I will not
give it back though all my life I've tried.
Even if I did I could have the whole world
and all my dreams would become real.
Yet I'll keep it because it shortens my tongue
suffers me to long, awakens me to song.

Life's a long street of cafes and restaurants
but I'll continue chewing on this ancient bone,
because when I do even the wolf smiles
and the whale blows the sea into the sky.

Is it always like this, like a madman's speech?
The disease is killing me but I won't give it back.

Why are we haggling, when it's all yours anyhow!
Do what you like, just don't let go of my hand.

Is this how you treat your new lovers:
taking us for a scenic drive, then dinner,
before giving us one night of perfect love?
But by morning only your scent remains
and a love letter written where you lay:
'I am always with you, find me and I'm yours.'

I no longer know if it is day or night
in this old hotel room you left me in
without a penny and with the bill unpaid.
I have looked for you everywhere more than twice,
but whenever I search I lose something instead.
If I lose everything, how will I ever find you?

I am beyond loneliness and despair,
even the hope you will one day return.
But if you let go of me now, I will drown.

I was a great drunkard for twenty years,
but this new drunkenness is the strangest thing:
one moment I am sober, the next I am lost.

One moment I am simply occupied
with the most ordinary everyday thing,
when my head swallows itself and I drown deep.

Then unheard music opens me like wings
and drunkenness fills me like a soundless storm.

Then you are with me like a bursting river:
your eyes breathing an ocean of stars.

Your eyes make the ripping rocks and tide
appear as a pillow of scented roses.

Your eyes turn the fear of drowning into
desires, longing, the heart's only song.

And when I hear you singing with me
I am scattered everywhere like bluest rain.

This drunkenness does not fall over, play ass
or gibber. In fact it makes no sound at all.

I am drunk now as my wife reads and a door creaks,
as a car skids through the wet night and a cigarette
smoking in the ashtray goes about its own business.

Yet I am flying on a wave and applauding
as you sing your latest love song like a storm.

We were sitting together and breathing a moment of
companionship, when you asked me,
'How goes it with you these days?
Are you a rich man or a poor man?'

'I'm not a rich man,' I replied, 'but I've known harder times,
so I can't say that I'm a poor man either.'

And you laughed like a pink balloon bobbing in the breeze.

'You misunderstood me,' you said,
'I meant are you rich or poor in my love?'

'Then I am a poor man,' I instantly replied.

'Only a poor man?' you uttered quizzically and raised your
thick black eyebrows to the top of your brow with disbelief.

Then in the instant of a flash, you dug your hand into my
chest and pulled out my heart, laying it
flat on your palm and opening it out like a book. You studied
it closely for a while before thrusting it before my eyes:

'See, just as I thought!' you quipped with open delight, 'it's
full of many things, but there's not even a hint of real love!'

For some reason your words did not disturb or alarm me.
Though their truth was undeniable,
I found them pleasant and satisfying, as if they had filled a
deep unknown need in me. I felt happy
and free, and 'at home' for the first time in my life. And I
thanked you for revealing to me the zero of my love.

'You appear to be pleased that your heart is empty
of any love for me,' you remarked.

'I am more than pleased,' I replied, 'in fact I feel very happy.
All these long years I have been continually
troubled and tormented whether I loved you or not,
but now you have freed me from all this worry and confusion.
Now I truly know that real love is a gift from God to man.
Now I can stand outside your door like a true beggar and cry out to you
with all my heart, 'Give me love, give me love, because I have none.'

'And you will not be able to bear to see me so naked and
one day you will give me some,
because you are Love and Love must love.
So why shouldn't I feel pleased!'

Then you wrapped your pink laughter around me
and for the shortest moment we floated as one balloon.

What are the true facts about watching the girls go by?
Whenever I question you, you say,
'Keep on doing it, until you tire of it!'

Is it just a passing fancy or an age-old habit?
A fragmented unity or a search for a lost part of myself?
An echo of misplaced beauty or a lack of self control?
Or what?

Yet there are those torn days and moments
when I want to forget you just for an instant
and curl my fingers around a pillow of flesh
and blood and to sleep long and deep again.

But what have I ever done without you?
Where have I ever been where you are not?
What have I ever held that is not you?
Whom have I ever known where you are not?
Even when asleep, I lie in your arms like a lullaby.

Forgive me, but I'm telling you nothing new.
I'm just talking aloud to indulge my vanity
and to relieve a moment of discomfort,
hoping to root my name in your heart
by carving myself in more detailed nakedness.

An evening sunrise.

An all-engulfing, dissolving
deepening stillness inhaling
itself like a timeless breath.

Now,
the perfect blue of freeing silence,
the soundless pink laughter of bliss,
the clearest golden sea of peace,
ascending as the purest flame
through the heart's eye.

All that we experience
is our own dreaming —
it is all imagination.

When mind stops,
the soul will see and be itself
for the first and forever time.