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I have in my hand a handful of gold.
I am rich, am I not?
Rich: I have in my hand a handful of worthless beauty,
And yes. I am rich.
Consider gold: consider the glittering dust between my fingers:
Consider how my wrist trembles,
How beneath the dry skin tendons tighten,
How bones shift subtly in open sockets,
Creak for the weight of it. Consider a treasure
Confined to my cupped palm, overspilling the curled grip
Only by sharpened edges. Disc upon disc upon disc,
A funereal mound of a treasure.
Lit by a holy glow, my joy, a dusty haze. Something sacred;
And if gold were stained by blood, what hues would be achieved!
By this that I hold? - red-gold -
Light slipping as a shining glove about the rounded rim,
Shot through with crimson and mellow yellow, fairer than all the blues and pallid greens
Of the sunlit lands. Sacred, yes. So sacred! Relics, surely, from glass-fronted coffers.
Corroded, crumbling relics, marked by ash and lamb entrails.
The sacred and the profane, in my hand, in a handful, a hand full of gold.
All this, brighter than smiles and hair and cheap fragrant wine -
Perfection attained. Alchemy rendered meaningless,
All wasted here, in my hand.
And to think they wonder at my greed!
*
There came a day when the sky rained kisses,
Bored to murder of water.
Love pooled in the cracks between cobblestones,
And clogged up the gutters with soggy leaves
That tasted like an old friend's mouth
When peeled from the muddy masses by children
And tentatively - oh so tentative! - pressed to reverent lips.
Can you imagine it? Passion ruining old shoes left out on the porch,
And glittering in droplets on the dark heads of careless young women
Who left their hats at the office.
Can you imagine it? Rebellious boys only needing to stick out their tongues
For a try at what they've read about in forbidden scriptures;
Rebellious boys often struck silent. The first kiss, dealt as it is by impersonal weather,
Is a striking thing: an imaginary touch, warm and sloppy and indefinably different
From perfunctory good-night remarks,
A hint of all they do not understand, of terrible adulthood,
Waiting around the corner, leaving behind it trails
In the heavens, in the earth.
Can you imagine it? Beauty soaking through the rags of beggars, beggars who flee
Overhangs, and prefer baring their arms and their necks to brandishing their cups.
They die sooner, yes, but so happy.
A wondrous thing, the day when the skies opened up and rained kisses.
I could tell you everything, starting from that day;
And what a story it would be!
But: but. But remember first the few,
The hell-bound few.
There were some - the hell-bound few - who missed the honesty of faces wet with something more than a metaphor,
Who missed being able to splash through the puddles without having unseen faces
Anoint their galoshes,
Who missed the way that grass slashed green, unexpectedly bright,
Across the world after the old and watery storms,
Who missed the stink of wet dogs,
Who missed the rain that was: rain, not a miracle.
Poor sad people; they never stopped carrying umbrellas.
Hope comes in strange shapes, and does nothing to shield our shoulders from the rain,
Which is still falling in dribbles of borrowed affection, (hopes all unfulfilled).
Remember them, and feel a little sad,
Even as you burn your poncho and smile.
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