On the High Seas
After Paul Celan
Paris, that little ship that rides in the glass at anchor:
thus I have dinner with you, drink to you.
I drink so much that my heart darkens you,
so much, that Paris swims on its own tears,
so such, that it stems for the mist in the distance,
the mist that envelops us the world over,
where each and every familiar you is a branch,
on which I hang as a leaf, silent, swaying in suspense.
July 1984
