Charlie Hopkins - Every moment, I am kneeling

for Carol

 

To everything alive,
to strangers and to moths around the open fires of light bulbs,
my common heart is opening.
In every rounded corner of the world there is a laughter
I can hear,
a joy I share with falling leaves and sparrows.

Inside his prison cell, the condemned man is awake,
overcome with joy,
his floor worn smooth with dancing.
The sand bags packed around his eyes are there to stop the river overflowing.
Hear church bells ring in the palms of his hands!
There is happy static jumping in the blood.
Across his ribcage, waving pastures, fireflies humming!

The pain that comes with love is taken down into the body,
locked in cells designed to open.
That pain is free to go now.
Born naked into fire, that pain, is forgotten!
The pain of Earth confined in solitary space,
all that is over now!
From here, I see a billion suns are clustered in your crown.

Some like to take the shape of planetary nebulae falling past the world
as flaming dust.
I follow the blood, returning to the heart.
Every moment, I am kneeling with an ear against my prison wall
and the breathing heart I listen for is yours.

 Marc Chagall-les amoureux de Venise

 https://charliehopkinspoetry.wordpress.com/