Saturn
for
Leonard Schwartz
(The Saturn
in what follows is not Goya’s but the harvest king—the knowing,
known lover whose festival December 17th was thought to mark the end of the
year and in whose love, Acteon, the poem says, was reborn.)
The water in
this wide canal is dark:
it hides the
silt.
I think I lie
within a branch reflected there
and watch
your fingers hold me down.
Your hand
becomes a part of my depleted sky.
Although I
can’t possess, I will concede:
the hand that
holds me here is wholly mine,
something you
will never see nor own.
Neither
absence nor wit,
but the
plentiful blue of the sun.
(The one I
wanted now will not go home.
This is his
dance, surrounded by the pine trees in the frost.
Their resin
burns, and I myself desire what I thought I’d never see.
As if beneath
the sheets
his hand were
turning round the sun.
Ecstatic,
cold, it burns:
he is the one
I watch and so am seen.)
(My brothers,
all uneven words are his; the rest belong to you.
He finds
himself within the abstract line, for there he cannot feel.
The hand that
reaches toward his shirt can feel his touch:
feeling, as
he says, is not to choose.)
Knowing
nothing, nothing’s really felt, I wrongly say:
the sky is
yours,
and in your
sky, the sun again begins to burn.
You are
alone.
The others do
not call.
You build
their harvest,
and in my
mind, though only in my mind,
I see your
fingers reach and move along the air.
O father,
what color will I see within your shirt tonight?
