Perhaps By Then You Will No Longer Be In Love

Although you have betrayed him in a dream,

you have betrayed him, and the infidelities

of sleep will change you: you

will find yourself suddenly in love

with the two young women

outside your window

whose voices and laughter fell

groundward

with last winter’s snow. You will begin to think:

I am beginning to move among them.

But only you will be wearing a snap-brimmed

hat. When the knock comes, it will knock

a certain reticence. It will leave

your door covered in white knuckles.

And the windows will no longer breathe, they will die

like paintings. And will no longer be

worrying the stars into meaning, they will

already mean something, but that will only be the wind,

only the wind that will be

keen and keening.

All else will remain hidden and nameless.

By which I mean: your soul. By which I mean

you will begin by missing

your old sadness, that old country: a country

fielded in rye. A strange sore

will just then start to form

underneath your tongue.

You will always find yourself being unfaithful to someone.

You will always be gathering something from the landscape

without poems:

then, finally, winter,

to once again

thin things out, down

to those two women’s

voices. And their laughter, their laughter falling

with the new snow?

Perhaps by then you will no longer be in love.

Your infidelities will have changed you.