Cliff Walk at Pourville, Claude Monet
Long ago we smoked cigarettes in our cramped quarters
Thousands of miles apart,
Talking of Chopin and love.
We talked about a summer rain that fell upon a lighthouse.
We heard a dying man play on the record,
A man who sounded like tears.
You swam through all that’s heart, and
Our tattered pleas were sewn to the hem of your rose-stained garb.
We told one another that night
Tales of our flesh, chronicles of courtship
Chiseled beside jabs in ache.
And you told me thus, in a wry whisper:
“Affection is loneliness in grace.”
We wrote songs in our lies,
About beautiful women and men veiled in drizzling veils
Of August mist, the September rain.