Two Poems
you can sleep in the sun when you love
only the enlightened sleep over the sea
anyone who loves can swim in the sun
we fell on the plumes and the berries fragrances
so grand and lilac-filled we rose
and the bowers tossed us all the way into the sun
who can sleep over the sea no one only those
who have shed ……
only they sleep
over the full berating somber most delicate sea
I’ll tell you where the ocean ends. It ends
in a particular place in space, which continues forever
in blackness until that time
you’re swimming in the ocean. When time becomes
space you no longer swim, not as a body.
Are we done?
No one knows what happened to the boats. Like
the primitive in us, the boats are simply material.
They lasted as long as they lasted. They’re like
us when we’re limited. They fell into the waters,
surfaced, flew away, came back, and this, this
has gone on long.
At the conjunction of sea and sky there I
Hinojosa lie. Between the fascist and the surreal
who knows the difference.
RUTH LEPSON is poet-in residence at the New England Conservatory. Her latest book, with Pressed Wafer, will be coming out this fall, musical settings posted at the press website. In the last decade she performed with bands low road and Box Lunch, and lately has been writing some prose pieces.