Richard Ronan: Love Among Lepers

Richard Ronan: Love Among Lepers First, for kindness, we must assume the darks ite not right to se this. Not outeght, perhaps not even inwardly ‘Things often wound the eye & remain ike picks of glas, wounding ain, tearing again through the recent seabbing of the thing sen & seen again ‘red dream recurring. Darkness then, And in it wordlssness. ‘Lotus bo strict inthis, for we cam never know our partner's latest turn of unbealth, if hes, since lst loved, lst lip ‘is now imperfect of any anawer, even to our softest, sweet word. [Noy kinder not to speak at all even if we still ean. Besides, what io there to say? What framing, what bodying forth in speech can you o I give this slow process, the gradual cssation of systams. Pieces & pieces, flings In the loving arm forgetting themselves by bts, losing the long-assumed narration that has kept iti its shape {init kind of sentence so long. ‘The corrosion of vessels of living nerve confused ‘a if with at, ash of a forest burnt black upstream, ‘one that leapt carbonized & howling into the cooling blood? How could we ask with any tenderness after the damage upriver, the cllla losses, the sldiery inthe blackened slough, the muck driving down fom the mite frontiers of wilderness, from the high stairway fom tho pith ofthe heart, flowing fom trickles to lava runs, a nutrient stew, poison now, alpha gone all omega, che horror ‘wo must watch even in davkneas & awalt. No, the etiquette, though broken so often with sobbing, rust be silence at last we must not speak. ‘Any word can run mad with tof, and with eviscration of isa ‘& there is no word fr living through this, there is no word for cour beloved fil piecemeal, no word to speak the itch Inalde the fingers to be of, candle wax thining to the bove-wick, ‘no word conveying the centering toward a more & more encential which i itself exeential to nothing & noone ‘but ourelves, in ules love in unsupporting darkness, tongues ‘numb and a low aa sick dogs. ‘Darkness inthe room. Daraess in the mind, the heart & sprit ‘the clean table, the finger ike a glas pen drawing ws in contours of light. Byes. Yours. Skin. Your sin, sisted as i by the spray of luminous suf, salty & damp as sweat, your abrupt vigor, the shudders alts from where you sat once upon me & redld dizzy into selflesnessI seit withthe darkened eye ‘touch you till whole enough to read you, tohave always read you & beyond you & through you into you ‘into that which was divin, that to which you gave fe, thi radiance that cannot ail our pi. 1s there still thi, nthe fe-worn husks we've weathered int? ‘remnants of it embering of our dep and volatile love, ‘some fossil of « phoenix to redeem what has come tobe, ‘with what had once bows? Ob, what wet planet we were, rade half of great fre and how we descend the stars, ‘mountains melting into slag-laden fiumes, iron poured ‘on the hot sea, the sea bole of int a bref power ‘of thanderheads, spewing a molten rain onto nothing remaining, but this remembered passion, the distant passion. ‘We are the things of such things that se nothing in our pain Here, wo've forgotton again our meagre impulse toward love, we fll onto softened shoulder. You sob Tam too tired to weep. We lose the thought of what we meant todo together. Beloved, {love you & ther is no go. Ob, I love you and there is no hope. oak how we ae stil so hungry for each other ‘sul we wil not ive "The linens clenched in your white fst as you sit up, dark, a fle shape that T cannot see & you are sounding 1 long sharpened EEEEEBEE in the throat, far off, far of, the leife cutting another pound, nother god-ating, faith-rotten day of rite & ash. ‘And then it s me—-EEEEEEEaguin and I se tho bloodless, ‘open-mouthed loss of you. Again. ‘And again I clove your imperfect eyes because again ‘hey are left half open & noone to stare through them, ‘again tho autumn sunlight outside & your fac no longer yours (Ob what wast I was? Where i be I loved? ‘The wind, the un ‘The wind EEEEEEEE ‘and tll me agi, vehy It swe ive ogee such a tis again?

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