Lightning

Unmasked, one face presses against another face, cheek to cheek: and then a thunderbolt boils up, splits the darkness, and a world is born. Unmasked — beyond the clamor of the blind bazaar — behind our tears. Is this a sea of precious pearls or a tree of diamonds with matchless buds dancing on your cheek, unmasked and plain to see. I gather with my black lashes your clear drops and in the depths of the heart of my earth I plant them. A wheat field grows in the depths, an ocean takes shape in the depths, without the night raid of locusts, without sharks. A shore without shore, a sea without storm in your face, upon your breast. Upon this sea the sea swallows come to rest, heads on each other’s shoulders after the height of flight. Heads on each other’s shoulders, through eased eyelids we gaze at each other’s faces, we linger a moment, again flying, we circle in each other’s open space toward the height, and we pass, one after another, through the mask of all the rotten borders. Is this a ray of the sun or a vein of diamond? Flowing, shining in the creases beneath your eyes, and rolling down my cheek...