My friend and I are in love with the same woman.
He speaks one language with her, and I speak another.
She loves what's different about us and what's the same.
He was born so he will die.
I was born.
I, too, will die.
That makes us members of the hungry and the thirsty.
She requires our hunger.
Orphaned, she calls it.
She insists on our thirst, sprung from death's deathless
fountain, she says.
Sometimes, when she's lying between us,
I watch amazed as his fingers turn her entirely
into a body of glistening sobs and joyful tremors.
And then I vow to give the rest of my life to know her
as deeply as he knows her.
Once, a troubled voice only I sometimes hear
asked, do you really mean the rest of your life?
Can you begin a new kind of love at your age?
What will people think?
And as if reading my mind, she turned toward me and said,
anyone who questions himself at such a moment
doesn't belong here.
My friend and I are in love with the same woman.
That makes us brothers.
Our love for her is a secret.
That makes us brothers twice over.
She's in love with each of us alone and both of us together.
What's that make us?
Wings of one bird opposite terminals to her luminous arc.
Upper and lower hemispheres of her circle.
The pick in front of her.
Sun and moon of her.
Silver and glass of her.
Sun side and moss side of her.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, oh, yes.