Often, I Cannot Tell You How Often
(after Verlaine)
Often, I cannot tell you how often,
Asleep, in a liquid dream, or awake,
Ambulant in a waking dream,
When hardly anyone is out
Walking in the almost winter night,
In the penumbra of a streetlamp,
Hardly in the light now, across the street
I see the figure of someone who is
Not anyone, but someone I know
Who knows me, too, someone I have
Not met, and never do, coming towards me,
My phantom, familiar, my elusive, present.
Every nerve quivers for the approach,
The heart-stifling approach of the world to come,
To rip this one apart, that still remains,
The world that is not, even as
It is – the world that encumbers.