Lovers, each satisfied in the other, I ask
you about us. You grasp yourselves. Have you a sign?
-Rainer Maria Rilke
duration.
Stones do not know their future when quarried.
Gravity does not know anything.
The architects have gone to sleep.
Any order is fortuitous, not natural,
will future history-writers believe it?
We lean together,
and a wind blows through this arch
like breath over a flute.
Hold. Hold that note.
Hold I you,
Weeds garnish our feet.
No use asking
how long gravity
can keep this together.
just enough, with no more intention
than any other falling stone.
The place you touch so tenderly
does not disappear: beneath it you feel pure