dreaming, longing, lingering

Photo: Jim Brandenburg

... despite the distance, despite everything that went so very wrong.

*       *       *

Spoken into a mirror

"I travel to you

your warmth
To stand or lie in each other's arms

battle scars, tired of the old deceits
we come nervously to each other
yet surely (we think)

Is this the clarity
we dream of?

Not magic but more powerful
in its simplicity --
us

Guided out beyond the ramparts
the savage boors

Touch me . . . you"

and tinkling bells in the distance
and the words flatter themselves, words on words....



--Lee Harwood, from 'Czech Dream' in Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970, eds. Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1999), p. 108.