GETHSEMANE

Fallen,
I lay here,
cursed,
as stone;
a dream reversed,
ruin of my own fault.

I imagined too hard.

Your fingered brush,
so light and so spark,
so ever and so lush,
turned callous
before me,
leaving me
pressed and emptied.

I was as brittle bone,
de-fleshed.

And our life grew
too soon for you,
or too much,
perhaps; certainly
more than I
could ever unmake.

I dreamed too hard.

And what is there to do
with wounds of this sort,
of this brand,
of this other kind,
but to treat them
with tears and with love-
____________reversed?

Our paths through this garden
of agony and eden,
once parallel, now lie
crossed,

and it is here I stay,
vexed,
hard and salted;
a stone.

By Raphael Armand