songless

it starts with a song
whose unforgettable lyrics
that you hummed two days ago
evade your eager lips tonight
that in desperation mouth
words that do not belong.
you start again .
and again.
okay, one.more time
you tell yourself.
but memory's winding roads
divert you to other unrelated
endlessly straight ones
and the song must rest
incomplete.uncompleted.
on the verge of forever's cliffs.

and you wonder
if it went the way
of all of those other loves -
friendships, coffee places, novels,
triumphs, laughter, autumn evenings
- you have given up on.

you search an empty horizon
for those lost stars
nowhere to be seen
on this moonless night.
and you pick yourself up
in a benign resignation
(how light the body feels now)
back into the house
whose walls and shelves
have come undone
without the hooks of memory.
as they fold up in their uncertainty
you walk to the innermost room
and fall onto a mattress, into a sleep
whose depth can never match
the emptiness around.

tomorrow the house will have
resurrected itself in morning glory
the windows will be opened
for new loves to waltz in
perhaps with a once known song
and the night's reverie will be
but a pale blue dot at the centre
of everything you see.