Courtyard Song, Twilight Hawk (New York Memory of Desire, Summer 1991)

Courtyard Song, Twilight Hawk
(New York Memory of Desire, Summer 1991)
To S


From the courtyard five floors below, I hear
A boy's voice singing an indistinct song
In a melody like the dying light.
I am alone and thinking of you.
The air is too still to move.

Yet high on the building opposite
This my back window,
Across the courtyard, across the street,
The white curtains of an apartment
Billow into the twilight.

A lone bird, a city hawk,
Stands erect on the watertower crown.
I can see the balance of night and day
Pivot on the hinge of its body, tremble
On the syllable of the singing boys voice.

If I could end this sorrow, alone turn
The light upon the bare tips of your breasts
Follow the melody through the currents of your legs
And gather the furious fragments of this desire;
If I could drown night in your naked skin

I would snatch you like a hawk, consume you
Like this broken melody, enchanted in this
Permanence of time between night and day, swallow
The harsh delicacy of your tongue, your voice, my lust.
But it is not now possible, between you and me

To sink beneath the sounds of the city
To suddenly touch a face, or love a woman, a man,
In the wounded terrain of our bodies, to consume
Ourselves as sweet as a hawk swallows its prey
The night, as vicious as a distant melody sings to me.


Jerry Monaco
New York City
Also see Shandean Postscripts to Politics and Culture

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