And a voice came to me and said:
People betray each other all the time,
How did you live without knowing this,
What a child you have been, for so long.

Don't you remember how a star started
To flicker then went out in a room dissolving
Into darkness, beside you someone still
Breathing, breathing, wanting to devour

Your body without sharing his soul, wanting
To disown his own spirit, his own ghost
Rising against him, rising against you,

Wrestling a word that may have been the twin
Of silence, a muffled syllable akin to love,
Though if it was it was by hope unfed.

PHILLIS LEVIN’s awards in the US include the Norma Farber First Book Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her fourth collection, May Day, will be published by Penguin in 2008.

© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.

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