from Fete

The park’s dark-green evening dress,
the soft sleeve, the tunnel –
the avenue we walk along.
We feel our way inside the sleeve
like a strange arm searching for light.
A pliant, longing arm of a strange body.

We listen to the sounds of the night, sawing, tapping,
hammering in the bushes.

Fete, we keep whispering
the password to each other.
This is a fete.
Cannot decline the invitation.
Cannot even leave the room,
the fete is about to begin.
No time to go back home
before the fete starts anew
in the middle of the road.

Seagulls shine on the lawn –
bird shit on the wet, black statue.
You have found people of your own kind, looking like you,
carved out of the same coffin.
Black boats float under their eyes, too.
They, too, believe that the spring will come again,
every instant will start a fete.

Skyrockets explode outward from their own core,
rockets bring something distant close to us
and then explode it, explode your face.
Exactly the right experience for a fete,
isn’t it, you can imagine something changing.
The celebrants alike the Furies,
the Erinyes, exude confetti, empty bottles.

Your image on the surface of the water:
it is you, but you are not it.
The stone wall crumbles, dissolves in the water
sculpted out of darkness.