WATER COURSES
I followed you down by the
water courses.
So wrote a poet many years
ago
But not so far in the past,
When it was still possible to
say such a thing
As water courses
And not know what it meant.
I heard you in ripples and
felt your eddies.
No one today would speak that
way,
But he was someone whose
English
Was learned from a book,
A sacred text, and he meant brook
Or stream, where
someone would fish
Or bathe, and where lovers met.
You lay beneath the
currents as below the sky.
The language of his heart and
soul was Hebrew
And when he tried another
tongue,
A modern one, his heart was
tied in knots,
His soul became unsure of
itself,
For it is so much simpler in
the ancient speech,
Fewer words, less grammar,
And far more implications
You can follow in the letters
of silence.
Your shadow pressed upon
the crystal sands.
Water courses means nothing
today,
Nor even braes or floods or
brooks,
The concept of our love is
shallow,
Unclean by moonlight,
Unfair in the sun,
Raucous, public and brief,
Like our words and our
syntax.
I dreamed you were there
when the waters passed.
I envy that young man in
Tel-Aviv
Who thought he could turn his
naïve dreams
Into terms he found in a
dictionary,
As though he could make old
dreams live
By alluding to archaic words
for streams
And brooks; no, he wasn’t
reactionary.
He was too innocent. I will forgive
His errors, for whatever his
passion means
Flows by deeply and slowly.
I dip my fingers in the
water course and feel your words.
Words carry
Their own history hidden
their sounds
And appearance, not in their
meanings.
Meanings may be found in
undulating clouds
Not in the water courses,
On the echoes of the wind
among the trees.
Long after they are no longer
spoken
And their resonance has grown
dry
As an ancient wadi’s path through
the hills,
I dream your presence in the shape
of things,
No longer language, no longer
sense.
Only my eagerness to lie
with you remains.
His eagerness was naïve, his
words innocent
Of meaning, his love a lost
impression
Like the original couple who
danced
By the shores of a water
course
And left their footprints,
fossils now.
You whispered then and
touched my soul.