Art and poetry on page and stage

gift box

12

William Benton

THE VISIBLE LEAF

You’re still at the lab,
with your hair drawn casually back.

Molecules rehearse
an unceasing contiuity

in the visible leaf.

It was fun to see Montreux, the surprise
of palm trees along the promenade, the castle

with its endless visitors. I want you to be
a part of the day’s attention,

not an interlude, but complicit

in all the intricate
and hapless details

that are the sum,
the unknowable mosaic, the house

that love builds for itself.

MUSIC

After Blok

The alarm subsides.
At night the city starts to vanish.
God’s music is: all the sounds
that earth can bear.

“I’ll sweep shawl about my shoulders and face storm.”
You are, for me, the flame of roses,
the slanted sunlight at dusk
that fills the room.

Proprietor of the universe,
sing me the little tune
of pulse, of pain, of lovers
ending in oblivion.

.