Back and farther back, toward the beginning
when everything was burning and nothing
was complex, nothing complicated.
Back, toward the first-born
heat, the fires that engendered
universes and gods and taxi meters,
long sentences and days when you never called
and stupid waiters
and rude children and Thursday afternoons
with nothing in the fridge
everything
and back and back again
to the instant right before the big party,
everything is ready
all that remains is for it all to show up and you
too, a few million years late,
of course,
in this cold world of perverted
and promiscuous matter. Back and farther back,
I want to wait for you here,
in this darkness made of future,
expectant and anxious,
and I want one by one to name all objects,
all things, as they expand,
until I come to you, to you again,
and never tell you that I have traveled
many times to the beginning of everything,
that I have seen you naked countless
nights for the first time
but each time different (faithful chance!)
but each time different (faithful chance!)
and always with doubt, with the cold fear
of not knowing if I’m in this world
or in another where our bodies do not
explode on contact;
in a world where we do not lie together
looking at the ceiling, at everything
we have created with desire:
the young, voracious universe
over which we have lost control.
Ben Clark
Translation: Magda Bogin