By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two
together in their sleep will defeat the darkness
like a double drum in the forest, pounding
against the thick wall of wet leaves.
Night travel: black flame of sleep
that snips the threads of the earth’s grapes,
punctual as a headlong train that would haul
shadows and cold rocks, endlessly.
Because of this, Love, tie me to a purer motion,
to the constancy that beats in your chest
with the wings of a swan underwater,
so that our sleep might answer all the sky’s
starry questions with a single key,
with a single door the shadows had closed.