︎ Prev          Archive          Next ︎

Arnold Klein
– FROM MISCELLANEOUS LOVE POEMS


Love, your eyes move
On as unfathomed errands as those dragonflies move

Sudden ways on,
Between your lover and the ground you paint his gaze on:

Am I transfixed?
The painter boasts that in her finished work what stands fixed

And expressed is
Profounder than appearances – and such a test is

This I set yours:
That when you turn your canvas, is the gaze that met yours

Manifest in
Its innermost? Or do my thoughts, the most clandestine,

Break from cover
Only when, as now, your gaze turns from your lover

To depict his?
And should you ask him how your gaze should interdict his,

Love, how say how,
Since till you see me see you when, as there’s no way how,

You don’t see me,
You can’t know what I saw, nor why such instants free me.