Circles

You used to tell me, “Artemidoros, farewell...”
and it saddened me that you broke off the quote.
As if of the whole poem
you’d remembered only the goodbye.

In the ranks of trees beyond the window
a great turmoil was breaking out.
The surges of wind and the force of the drops
were making them older. Not wiser.

You held out your hand and kept mine for a moment.
A lie and lying in the warmth of your palm.
Or was I reading it in your eyes?
The black fear of being alone and of loneliness...

I had no sense that my hand was the only one
or that yours was the only one.
I had no sense.

The Japanese cherries, a gift from the Japanese
to my street, were weaving a pink-red carpet.
They sneered at the ash tree in my back yard
and puffed themselves up at every approving cry.

The passers-by gazed at the Japanese cherries.
The ash tree went on growing incognito, and up high.

Another time, with a pleading smile
hidden in the telephone receiver,
your voice was smiling at me
and coaxing me to answer you.

We won’t keep silent. We’ll talk.
That’s how we’ll hide best.
Behind the Japanese blossoms of separate phrases.
Behind the pink-red carpet of syllables.

“Artemidoros, farewell...”
“Farewell, my beauty...”

The green parrot
that struck against my window
and the green parrot that sang at dawn...
The black ravens flying behind the dove.
All of it is scraps of sky
from which the ash tree awaits its rain.

The circles of our footsteps were widening
in the water.