BIG CITY

Crossing of strangers among lights
while cold and secret through the streets
we run on homeward wheels, and learn
a no-man's-land of flesh and bone.
Homeless the rolling blood that cries
of love and Love in hidden ways
where kisses like a bird fly back
and bring no bounty to their Ark,
since all about the city stands
night, like a monument for friends
whose lives in hills of darkness share
the serious motions of desire,
passion that estranges all
but the involuntary shell
and clings to nothing in the gulf
but the blind magnet of a self.
Our sense has only sense for light
and the flames are separate
while among them aimless words
have no home to move towards.
Once on a murmuring afternoon 
speech was a dancer in the sun,
while cold as whips under the grass
the secret plants crawled up to us
who now are in their pulsing dark
while the dancer stamps us back
- a flower and a root that strives
towards it.  And a god who grieves.
				Cairo