Adonis Diaries

By: Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours.

Haven’t they carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.

Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands.

And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled;

the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.

Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.

Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

By: Julia Vinograd

I’m not here, don’t look at me.
Don’t scream when your children look at me,
do you think bad dreams are contagious?
 
Do you think I’ll breathe bad luck on your children?
Suppose you’d spent the afternoon
shining in your lover’s bed
and then brought him home to meet your parents
and they screamed
“Don’t touch that, you don’t know where it’s been!”

You can’t see me,
I’m just a crack in your contact lens;
I’m just a crack in your mirror.

My hands are dirty.
I’ve got your shadow under my fingernails,
I can’t wash it out.

I’ve got the shakes,
my own skin isn’t speaking to me
and I’m not speaking to you.

I’m not here, I have no past,
no memories, no name, not allowed.

So I eat your memories like garbage,
all your buried broken promises
and the bad dreams you forge
till you see me. 
Till you don’t see me.
I’m not here.