ALL - Sonnet L'Abbé Poems

 
 

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ALL

This is all that we will leave behind -- a line of words and at
the end a little silence, then another word that someone else
might speak, and speaking speak the only thing that I have given you,
and folded it in words that you have given back, this long duet
that is the you and I that we become, a tree that flowers where
we used to stand, and after flowers apples that begin to fill
the air in autumn light, a tree that is a dream of apples where

the light that fills our eyes when we are in each other's gaze is that
refulgence that becomes an apple through the turning year, a sun
that hangs so lightly on the branch that just the merest breath might carry
it away, the breath the words that cast us up in one embrace,
words that made of us the sun and apples and autumnal airs --
these are all I had for you, the little world where we are
but are another self that is not ours, asleep inside the light.