The Threatened One

It is love. I will have to hide or flee.
Its prison walls grow larger, as in a fearful dream. The
alluring mask has changed, but as usual it is the only
one. What use now are my talismans, my touchstones:
the practice of literature, vague learning, an apprentice-
ship to the language used by the flinty Northland to sing
of its seas and its swords, the serenity of friendship, the
galleries of the library, ordinary things, habits, the
young love of my mother, the soldierly shadow cast by
my dead ancestors, the timeless night, the flavor of
sleep and dream?
Being with you or without you is how I measure my time.
Now the water jug shatters above the spring, now the man
rises to the sound of birds, now those who look through
the windows are indistinguishable, but the darkness has
not brought peace.
It is love, I know it; the anxiety and relief at hearing your
voice, the hope and the memory, the horror at living in
succession.
It is love with its own mythology, its minor and pointless
magic.
There is a street corner I do not dare to pass.
Now the armies surround me, the rabble.
(This room is unreal. She has not seen it.)
A woman's name has me in thrall.
A woman's being afflicts my whole body.