RUNDELANIA

Quartet

by Kitty Jospé

Echolocation

Do you remember the game we used to play,
you say Marco and I say Polo
until we find each other?

So, what a surprise to say day
and you say break
and I realize you too are thinking
of the wonder at how the earth
keeps turning, offering everywhere,
for someone a new day starting.

Imagine if we could echolocate,
every time we lose the words
we need. As if each thank
were waiting for a
you to receive it—
each thought finding just
the word to deliver it on cue.
I say rough and you know
it’s a question of draft,
and you continue with wrapped
and I say delicious
as we unwrap the possibilities.

Melancolie
— inspired by the sculpture of the same name by Albert György

Today, you frame a silver sky,
but whatever the weather,
as seasons revolve one
to the next, beginning, ending
only to begin again,
what remains, is your embrace
of hollowness.

Your body, a black outline,
emptied, waiting as it holds
the light and dark of a day
filling you without being
part of you—
an outside
breathing that cannot touch
your inner space.

I want to hold your crossed hands—
I want to know their story,
how they have become worn.
I want to believe in the possibility
of their patina polished
as if once, touched and loved,
touching and loving.
I want to believe that in spite of everything,
your hands stripped to gloss, are testimony
to what makes your head hang so heavy
in the emptiness
of your wracked arms—

and to that possibility
of touch and love.

We as One [1]

He speaks of mountains, morning light; a part of the
world, not written in the news, something his heart
prompts him to swallow without question. It grows
inside us when someone says we matter to them; a brutal
dismissal tells us we don’t. Love is not flowers with
chocolates. Nothing is forever. These things
are so easy to say. Hopes, promised love disguised
as possible. Make a picture from the real world, as
it is, says Rauschenberg. People, real as themselves.