I wrote you a brief and painless poem,
a shortest rapture;
wounds, however, shine to me
like scimitars in the Sun, like shining swords
emblazoned with the blood of gods,
the sacrilege of refuse,
blasphemous pain.
In the desert, we take long strides
as parched marauders to'ard
the blazing Sun; and 'on arrival,
'on arrival, thence
do we depart
from gods alone,
our feet, our eyes,
our loneliness amended
only in the psalm
of a sweltering Hebrew nightfall,
the ascension of the dusk—
at last, at last
we find in our chests
the bulbous heart
they point to in those Books.
It is frigid when the Stars
open themselves to us
and weep their Songs:
dejection, hearthrob, ecstasy;
this order to their Universe.
And we gaze all along
on their theatrics,
as though it were a fiction,
when the both of us, we both know it's true:
we, both of us, believe—
whether we do declare or no,
we believe in the Stars.
08/27/2016
Westville, Durban
after Hidalgo