Faun

Have you hidden so far away for so long?

Have you come down the mountainside

Only to draw me away?

You may pretend at being unseen now

But the heat of your neck vaporizes the morning

And spice marks the air with your errant cells.

I have followed your tracks,

Picked your hair from the thorns by the path,

Seen your impression in the dewy grass.

I know it was you who touched me

On the shoulder as I slept.

I know you sowed your piping

Into my dreams.  The days

Have all been colored by that

And the months and the years

All strung together by that song.

We were children together,

What you became I became.

What was in my eye was in yours

Until that day when we really saw each other.

Perhaps the resemblance was too much to bear,

Or perhaps it’s just love’s nature to destroy more than it becomes.

Become! 

What fantastical task!  What unfulfilled wishing! 

We have already become in the first flash of being. 

From there we must only

Fall in love with ourselves again and again.

Now you have returned.

I am so old but you will not hear it.

You dance the old days into me -

            Remember afternoons?  Closets?  The rain?

            Remember the smudgy polish of our faces?

Faun, I will hurt myself listening to you

You will lead me to insensate ruin.

            But you are in love, Matthew.

You say as you have said before.

            And I am as helpless as you are.