(To Lars Lundquist)
With steady hands
you went on pouring the
ruddy autumn in my goblet.
You read your poems
bright like the maple leaves,
filling the air like a Brahms symphony,
-sipping one mouthful for each line.
I translated your birds and trees into
my birds and trees.
Nouns revealed their core.
Verbs were inert.
There was a meadow
in your coat pocket.
I called out to the Western Ghats,
as if it were a hungry sheep.
The wind was turning
the pages of an apple tree.
I inhaled my childhood.
As I looked on
you turned into a green train.
I boarded it and whistled like the rain.
We left behind the church of the chill.
Words rubbed against words.
