These things happen, more often than you’d think, but it takes courage to pay them attention…

what was that — the other night
can you not remember it clearly and true
during deepest peaceful healing sleep
a visitation sure as sun’s loving light
closer than sex, I felt your breath’s warmth
in chaste affection with timeless promise
I basked there surprised, in your spirit’s kiss
what our body life might term your blood’s heat

was it I who longed too keen for thee
or you who infiltrated me, love
or was this longing some independent thing
desiring to come about, within we
tell, was our desiring a pathology
or love’s atoll in a bleak vast sea
where alliances briefly instantiate
the way bubbles simmer making a tea

a small soul will call it imagined, love
what the I who tastes truth can’t unsee
a vision more wakeful than dreaming
a witnessing will more lucid than wakeful
a kindness more selfless than mother’s instinct
an insight less judging than infant’s gaze
a disclosure more open than memory’s light
a solemn oath more honest than breathing

_______RS

Note : Not knowing Greek I feel free to phantasize as to the meanings inside this beautiful musical piece, and associate its feelings somehow with those trying to grapple in the poem. Whether apt or not, isn’t the intensity beautiful? And also, the gorgeous simplistic instrumentation? There’s been a revival of sorts of the ancient Greek lyre music for the past ten years or so in Hellas, and I find it not essential to know the language for entering into this music’s soul.

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