Nosidam Elegies: The Fourth Elegy

4 

Love is not love but love is
Love itself
Love is not love but loving
Love is becoming, love is not yet
not yet, not ever.
Love is forever and never.

You are and I am.
You are, apart from me
Another apart, an other, a part
of me. And I am not
You, for I am, but I am if not you
Nothing.

So we speak the breath of windmills
and the labored exhalations
of the ground after a sudden summer rain.
We do not touch, like sitting in separate seats
brings you closest to me
wafting scents of the familiar
that knew you like the palm of my hand
where the back of your head used to lie
and I lied, my goodbye. Who can part
the sea with his hands
just as we cannot part
the earth and the sky, if only for the horizon
I never reach.

I am nothing, and love is nothing.
Love never was, never will.
It cannot be
Love is the tremor of the unbidden quake
the wind in passing brushed your face
the hands that clasped and intertwined
the lips an instant removed from the second kiss
Love is. It cannot be. We cannot be.
Can we?