Love Song

In love we contain
each other's secret name,
names we didn't even know we had,
and with kisses we steal from each other
the breath we need to say them
like they were the first words spoken:

Love
created the world
because it wanted something to love
and love hid itself inside us
to see its beloved through its own eyes,
our eyes,

but from us it learned to forget:
the sin we call knowledge, the emptiness
we invent all the colours and all the shapes
to disguise; we forgot our own divinity
and thought ourselves mere creatures,
prowling, alone, lost, afraid, fighting, dying,

but sometimes,
even when we can't find it in ourselves,
sometimes we see our divinity briefly glimmer
and elude our second glance,
hidden in someone else,

somewhere almost
but, as we eventually find out,

after all the quests and reversals of fortune,
all the half-remembered myths
through which we heroically drag ourselves
from ritual to history,
after all the murdered gods and sacrificed children,
and elaborations of atrocity and annihilation,

and after that infinite chasm of time that elapses
between first seeing you and first touching you

almost, but, I promise, not quite impossible to reach,

and we discover love again, and for all time,
and recreate the world anew,
safe from every cataclysm.

We all contain
each other's secret name,
and steal the breath we need
to speak it with a kiss,
and when we repeat it aloud
we discover they sound the same
and in each others arms
beside the river of time
we sing our names together again
and again
and again.