Variation on a theme: Daphne and Apollo

You have betrayed me, Eros.

You have sent me

my true love.

- Louise Gluck, "The Reproach"

Waning, trembling, loss of breath: the first signs of the permanence that will become the end of this story.

Picture woodland, Dear Reader, imagine trees with whorled roots, and leaning branches; picture sunlight and comforting shade; picture the occasional brook, silver rivulets crossing brown earth and clusters of green grass; the sky must be a blinding blue, for it cannot be otherwise, the mind will always insist on blueness; let the breeze be a delicious balm--in the beginning, at least. Isn't this how most stories start, after all?

Or imagine the city, if you will, the city with its absent stillness. I prefer the woods, but do what you must.

STICK TO THE STORY. A reprimand. There should always be a reprimand.

The mind is where the chase leads; the mind is where the chase is, and I begin:

The shadows lengthen as the day loses ground. Two shadows, they were, and one of them was faceless.

MIND YOUR TENSES.

At the body's swiftest, the limbs persevere, and the mind endures.  Soon, twilight, herald of night. Soon, the wind; soon, the truth. YOU ARE GETTING AHEAD OF YOURSELF. But it is a race, is it not?

IT IS A CHASE.

I erase a word and replace it with the same word and think that I am discovering newness. It is a form of madness. I look out the window and see a small, round moon. I think it is more yellow than white, but then I change my mind.

One shadow fleeing from the faceless one, from the impermanent one, he whose being is always a makeshift one. I come up with a list of adjectives: transient, shifting, short-lived, they. They is not an adjective. Impermanent, then.

And that was why I ran. An epiphany.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER HERE? A reprimand.

The other shadow, breaking, then, turning into someone else, breaks again.

Daphne, dazzled by a slice of brilliance, finds herself turning--

That was not in the outline. That sentence pushed its way from below, from somewhere unseen. That sentence was an insistence I did not foresee. It begs to be italicized, but I would rather look the other way. It was I, after all, who was dazzled, it was I who turned; it was I who mistook that slice of brilliance for light. There is no outline.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER HERE? There should always be a reprimand.

It never ends. I cannot have you follow me this way.

WHO IS THE You HERE? But must there always be a reprimand?

I have (finally, finally) taken the great myth and torn it apart.

You are the tree that I want to become.

The Walk Home

what surprises you most in what you feel,

earth's radiance or your own delight?

- Louis Gluck

The lamps were lit, the street was pale yellow, and my steps were unhurried as I walked.

I was thinking, it is no longer the night that's catching up with me; it is I who's catching up with the night. I was remembering a particular moment--daybreak, it was--when you made me realize twilight no longer made me sad, the way it used to, for a very long time.

A small, unforeseen smile, a quickening in my chest, the deep, languorous texture of evening--an aqueous joy was rushing through my veins, and I felt light, like a murmur, or a ripple. A faint memory of, of--something brushed my left cheek, and was gone before I could give it a name. The word/s seemed far away, too blurry for me to make out. Or was it a breeze?

I laughed, out loud, and the sound echoed upward, toward the sky (like I knew what sky meant), like my laughter always does when I am laughing, and happy. I felt my heart swell with anticipation. Just a few more steps and I would turn the corner that led to you.

Thoughts of hot tea, of music and books, of hope and love, wafted in my mind like promises about to be fulfilled. I brushed back some wisps of hair that fell over my eyes and quickened my pace. Awake and pensive, by the light of the furtive moon, I knew you were waiting.

Story

Sacred and unutterable Mind

flashing thorough the universe one thought,

- John Berryman

Let me tell you how it happened:


My foregoing thoughts of you: did we have to be all those? I cannot let go of this loveliness, all blurry and countless, unlike

the wondering I had done: oh, let me, let me ask, where? Where

are/ you/ are you

(in) the things I had seen you in: streets and highways, titles in bookshops, random twilights, a handful of rainy days, this solitary tree,

the accidental skein of prayers: let me ask you one final question, or be, or here, my love, here--

converged into one dazzling, lushly flickering light.


And you, beloved, were, one enunciated night, licked by the sudden warmth of a far-reaching flame. From the immeasurable--because, with time, turned into something unseen--distance, you crossed the rift between before and after. And by crossing, you sealed the hollow, drawn as you were by the brilliance: a known strangeness, yes? Beckoned, you came.

Summoned, you arrived.

And here is the afterglow: you and I, 

here.