Time

Let us meet in sweet oblivion
at the end of this circle,

when you have built a church with light,
and time is stuck between flesh and fleshlessness
like the last brown leaf beside the Ganges;

when you have pronounced my name
with the magic of a sapphire smile
and vowels curled like slow, painful rungs;

out of the heat and silence of roses
descends time, of slow circulation.

Time of sand; descent and incline,
time milked out of the horror of being,
where women are the motion of unfinished sentences.

Time of light, compulsion and return,
time for love and lamentation.

You dropped my name on lotus leaves
and it stained time
like the vanishing red in a blue sunset.

And there I lay
amidst the sand and clay,
without time and name.