The state we are in
as we leave agent and owner,
the lease in our hands,
the room a dream come true,
the room where a deeper dream
will unfold.
A three-year lease. He doesn’t want to sell.
His son might use it for college,
his three-year-old son.
Galettes at Breizh, a new find—
might be the best in town, though any would be
in the state we’re in, the world perfect and full.
From one end of rue Vieille du Temple
to the Seine, dark waters, shivering,
a ghost memory, I dive in
to another river from my houseboat
on the Thames, swim to a swan
who hisses and strikes like a snake
my hand, protecting her cygnets.
We head east on the Quai d’Orléans.
There! Look! Right above Notre Dame,
Venus and Jupiter shine, so close
they seem to be signaling, so bright
they seem to be speaking.
And there! Two swans on the bank
of the Seine, one with head tucked into wing,
the other grooming his feathers.
I remember Zeus disguised as swan
ravishing Leda, her hyacinth-colored eggs bearing
Castor and Clytaemnestra, Helen and Polydeuces;
remember the swan poems we wrote the year
we met, calling out to each other,
“Cob!” “Pen!”
We look back from the Pont de la Tournelle
at Our Lady’s eastern face, the skull
that shows in the dark.
The sweep of light across the heavens
from the tip of the golden tower, Jupiter and Venus
like swans curved in embrace.
And it seems to us that all that matters
is that we turn again
and again to love.
