Hours of talk, yet only silence came
Across lmowledge of separated pasts
And futures still uncertain and unnamed.

I came to you in hope of something grand,
Excited by the dream I had of you,
Anticipating Wonders at your hand.

I came and listened as you chanted slow
And tranquil incantations to a god
Whose being I could never hope to know.

And, praying done, you turned to me and told
Me how you found yourself, how you had lost
Your innocence, and how you felt so old.

I listened through our hot and swollen walk
For hours around the purple citied dark;
I listened and I heard your loneness talk.

Iheard a sad, embittered child’s voice,
The boy in you who seemed so much a man,
And understood that you had had a choice.

Your fall was not the ravishment of fate,
Nor was it exploitation; you had known
Just how you fell, and that had made you great.

If I should wake before the sky turned light
I'd close my eyes to dream again of you
And wish that I could know a world of night.

Poor Caliban, alone in his vague fright,
Cries out to sleep again, as I would do
HI should wake before the sky turned light.

I’d hide behind a fog of imaged light,
The ache of awesome, absent love still new,
And wish that I could know a world of night.

Yet ifI should succumb to pain, I might
Miss morning in its misted pale blue"
If I should wake before the sky turned light.

Your love is false; you’re holding me too tight
If you must make me sleep an absence through
And wish that I could know a world of night.

I’d be a fool, to prostitute my right

To dream and live in worlds ever new

IfI should wake before the sky turned light
And wish that I could know a world of night.

A Sherry Mayrent

black mass

the windows of the night
open to release silver darkness
dusted with occasional

single stars

we wandered on cat feet

down misted alleys

blackening the night sounds

with our dreaming

forms. we came to the clearing

that once had stood

lit black candles to the night
some of us whimpered,

though not in fear. we waited
until a shivering moon cast us in glittering silver fragments

the light stopped,

hidden by his ebony cloak
afterwards, when it was
over, we padded home, to
take our human forms.

literaryisupplement to s&b
chrls decker, editor
merry wlesner, layout

"Hem

Male Nude Goodbye

Sound body. Massive and limb- long fresco
Immovably reclines; burned in rose symmetry.

Reaching outward ofall strength
Sorrow skims past parts in breathing, bending service
Revering their classical form.

Arching while stretching toward and beyond,
Emergent contours flutter in bright tones.

As shadows use in last detail

The alarming, unconquered beauty.

- - Susan Richardson

Landscape #78
by Paul Doughty

 

