I know how the stories go,
mythic recurrences,
biblical endeavors—
me, stoic. resolute
in my impermanence.
I am that city.
You—are that river,
hither and thithering, undecided
forever.
I desire commerce. trade.
I cannot move. Yet I yearn to
bend forward.
you—senselessly, you facilitate. yet,
you seek nothing but return
to the father.
Take any given late-
winter afternoon
on these scrupulous historical records:
the sun and wind playing
on metal, on bricks,
and across the chittering water
both necessarily make their music,
both play a plainchant,
monophonic, but overlapping
both existing, sacred and gently,
in the spaces between letters
in the name of the other
both standing there
on the beguiling fringe wilderness
of one another,
side by side, a pair moving
through history for all time—but never going
together.
