After Darwish Poem by Rick Barot

I want from love only the beginning.
Not this hillside above the twilight-awakening
city, where you are more absent
for being so certain in my mind, the far
cathedral a gold nipple, the surrounding buildings
like silver and black boxes punctured
by their lights pushing out.
I want from love
only the beginning. Not the seaside
where we spoke away the night, the ocean only
an indigo sound, its edges appearing
in melting white lines, while the fog stood
away from us, out where boats swayed
like drunk holiday lights, the air weirdly still
and warm.
I want from love only
the beginning. Not the promenade and its rain
at 3AM, the blooms of two umbrellas
and our argument beneath them, as far apart
as the two boroughs separated
by a river, so that even the stone arc
of the bridge couldn't suture the arm's length
we stood from each other.
I want from love
only the beginning. Not the confession
you made on another hill: another man, another
figure mobilized out of my dreamscape
terror, the coat rack turning into a man
with antlers, the ficus turning into a man
with green skin. Below us, the city indifferent
with its diamond streets.
I want from love only
the beginning. The beginning of one more
conversation in a car, the beginning
of a snow that leaves the day as white
as a hospital, the beginning of an industrial dusk,
the beginning of a new rain, rain that is
the water of the Arno, the water of the Hudson,
the water of the Mississippi, the water of the Nile.