Something Of The Past

Our words

Have sprawled so far

From the margin

Where we had weakened our speech

To fold into each other

To write a beginning,

That they have lost all sweetness

Of that time,

And the book

Now swallows us as something of the past.

No longer do we bend our words

Into a form,

But we let them immigrate

And leave behind a kissing memory

Of what we once corresponded

As love.

We are not a poem,

Ah, but a broken metaphor--

With a silent simile undoing

Every facade washed

In handsome meaning.

The truth can

Come again,

From our silence:

The growing distance between

Our unmoved voices,

That once sang

For the exploration of

This hollow page,

Beautiful before I got here

To write

What I knew nothing of.