Stars – David Malouf

January 15, 2014, 2:15 pm
Filed under: poem | Tags: loneliness, love, stars

The stars have so far to go
alone or in harness
across a window pane.

Hour after hour tonight
I’ve journeyed with them, steady
the waves of your breath.

Dark space between our beds;
on the table a full tumbler
splits the light of stars

to stars, or floats
a column of dead water,
dead sky. From centuries

off, out of the reign
of one of nineteen pharaohs
a planet’s dust, metallic,

alive, is sifted down,
hovers in a bright
arc upon your cheek.

Miraculous! I lean
across the dark and touch it,
you smile in your sleep.

How far, how far we’ve come
together, tumbling like stars
in harness or alone

melting & burning