Southeast of Eden

Together they took the least space they could.
Entered each other deeply, to be less,
to throw one shadow only, to be still
for all the world while moving for each other.


--So space, so barely dented, might not bruise
and cry, and time come running. To this end
breaths went untaken till the only end
of that (this side of nothing): the great sigh
that gives this place away...
                      And out they come,
exciting one another with the kiss
to heal the bruise and be the bruise and there
they sit. The only angel in this case


came only there to point them, in their first
amazing silence, to two peaceful desks.


                                   -Glyn Maxwell




This poem appears in this month's addition of The New Yorker. For me, among the many thoughts and images it calls to mind is the two desks occupied by myself and Luke at this present moment as we are writing, somehow, to meet in the middle of where we are.