V-VII TRIFOIL

It was that simple: plainly: love for love.
This gum elastic overstretched, unseen,
(Lost bands of childhood keeping safe my gloves!)
Striking its own plaintive note in between,

When slightly touched and even not by hand,
By glance, by thought – by distance, by disdain,
By chance itself. And then you tried to rend
The strand so hard. It wasn’t torn. The singing pain

That dazed me, blinding pain, your end have caused
Of loosened rubber band, that struck and then went limp,
But bandaged first my eyes with bloody gauze –
Yet let it go – after me – a twisted limb.

It shouldn’t be an everlasting sting,
But still it’s swinging on its own string.


***
It was that simple: plainly: pain for pain.
I shouldn’t ask for anybody’s aid
In vengeance, as I did. As through the windowpane,
Tenacious, greenish, my remorse has wade.

Nothing but printed words embraced by rubber ring,
Strong, visible, and black, like that which hold
My childhood’s braid so tightly as if meant to wring
All thoughts through it and foretold

Embraced by rubber ring nothing but words,
Embarrassing and straight for you to read,
Reminding of the band that still engirds
Your head in my old dream with such a burning greed.

I send unwritten letter with my friend.
I wish I put it with my own hand.


***
It’ll be that simple: plainly: love for love.
In other words it will be: dust to dust,
Embers to embers, ashes as above
Named dust and dying coals. Anything but just

This future love will be. And the unthinking reed
Will struck its only plaintive note in the wind,
Unwinding it like any funereal screed
For those who neither won nor reached. Unwinged

And in the motion both strained and brusque
For good they will be gone, the darkness and the light.
I hope, soon it’ll come, eternal dusk –
In other words it’ll be not day, not night

But other kind of day, ever unkind
To us – deep in the dimness of the mind.