The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence

Moored to the same ring: The hour, the darkness and I, Our compasses hooded like falcons. Now the memory of you comes aching in With a wash of broken bits which never left port In which once we planned voyages, They come knocking like hearts asking: What departures on this tide? Breath of land, warm breath, You tighten the cold around the navel, Though all shores but the first have been foreign, And the first was not home until left behind. Our choice is ours but we have not made it, Containing as it does, our destination Circled with loss as with coral, and A destination only until attained. I have left you my hope to remember me by, Though now there is little resemblance. At this moment I could believe in no change, The mast perpetually Vacillating between the same constellations, The night never withdrawing its dark virtue From the harbor shaped as a heart, The sea pulsing as a heart, The sky vaulted as a heart, Where I know the light will shatter like a cry Above a discovery: 'Emptiness. Emptiness! Look!' Look. This is the morning.