She, the evening’s epitome
at the uneven end of dreams
and meeting’s cross of deserted streets. Solemn, statuesque,
spotlit neath
lonely lamp where curve meets damp we met. She stood where a park should have been, it struck me then,
amid the portico porch of granite grey unused for sitting though meant.
Instead, this distant semidark stare,
like overextended sidelong glare
yet straight ahead fixed on nothing
save vacant road and square of black opaque as obsidion glass,
of structure abandoned bleak and bare. I approached at deepest night,
teetering in silence plus beer,
booring catlike til just beneath
the tall smooth pedestal others
had placed her before me, the gray
ashen face a dim blank staring
down by indifferent frown amid
the throes of history unknown,
body layered in folds of stone,
unraised left wrist in clutch of nothing’s cold fist. The rock solid heroine only
I’ve met and secretly caressed
til dawn’s ritual tears left our earth awet.
{Brahms 3rd symphony, the third movement}