O My Dulcinea Poem by Eli Spivakovsky

Shall I measure you with candela?
or by the light of a nova?
or by the horse speed of a Furioso-North-Star
over and over?
until I break through with a crumpled kiss
that brings what I call 'water-berries' from your eyes to your mouth:
your tears like dew on your mouth
the flurries of this tempest
like snow blisters on your mouth

I knocked on our abandoned door
you'd collapsed in a field
nearby someone was playing a celeste
I found you there that day
I came back
I came back that day
I poured oxygen into you
you made all the flowers close their lips
you made the forest shiver

Later, I traced you with a murmaration of birds
that sounded like an end-blown flute
Do you remember how we shone?
Opalescent?
Stellate?
There, in the quiescence, where we changed our names

Go now, my dulcinea, with your magic trick:
the pledge, the turn, the prestige
Now we know how it ends
But your sleight-of-hand still surprises me
I thought somehow
a different vow was taken to begin with

It's as if we'd kept angels as hostages
and released them back to make their report
and now in the firmament
an official story has been opened
(in a thousand years it will be a codex)
and we are separated now like that very same firmament.