Our Eternal Night
Sinking in the golden sand of an endless shore
slowly fading sun kisses the sky goodnight.
Here against these waves I penetrate
the silence space,
where God is a darkness
Jesus crucified, Vishnu humanized,
the Goddess, visualized
not as one but two,
keeps dancing naked in the night,
but it’s the ocean that was my Great Mother,
whose bleeding heart gave me birth.
to whose sacred womb I now return.
Waves, like our shattered, scattered love,
tossing us about, tearing us apart,
yet I give myself up and surrender
to the waves on this silent winter night,
and sacrifice myself with the deepest trust
to the frigid yet loving, moving current,
as it takes me under this last time.
This depth is non-separate from the sky
we cannot fly.
This death non-separate from the life
we cannot live.
This love non-separate from what I am,
which you could not accept.
This time non-separate from the space
in which I would have danced with you,
if only for a moment while the sand
caressed our bare and blistered feet.
You said this was a dream, that it is,
for more than a dream I could not wish,
more than a dream I could never pray,
more than a dream my magic could not make.
And yet, there, in the stillness
of your frigid eastern night,
I was, I am, and I will be
I – when you touch yourself in the dark
I – when ecstasy seizes you at dawn
I – when your breath becomes the music
to which you dance and sing, which in time
will dissolve all your deeper pain.
If I could give you one gift, it would be
the seeing of my knowing all your pain,
the pain of wanting, the pain of striving,
the pain of too much tenderness when
the handsome poet stole your eternal love
and left her lying naked in the rain,
the pain when he penetrated you,
and left you wanting more of the same,
the pain when you shattered his heart,
the pain of remembering, the pain of forgetting,
the pain of living, and the pain of dying,
the pain of knowing, the pain of unknowing,
the pain of clarity, the pain of mystery.
They cursed my silence, they cursed my words,
but I was only a ghost for love’s eternal longing.
Seeing not seen, hearing not heard,
just the watcher of their dreams,
nothing more, aye, nothing less,
for their lips could not kiss the face
of their own perpetual pain and
embrace the shame that burned
rejected gypsy lovers at the stake.
And so they could not make love to me,
the shadow behind their fears,
the weeper behind their tears,
the god Shiva seized by Shakti
and slain under the power of their
undying virgin love.
Fear not, my unseen lovers,
for I am neither dead nor living
neither prince nor poet
not human enough even to be a pauper,
so I cannot pay for the well-deserved
ridicule and betrayal I have endured
these many days, these many lives,
but yet I carried the fire of the gods
that utterly destroyed the tenderness
of the sand upon which we walked
and turned our entire world to stone.
Yet I shall come to you again, when
the winter snow has become spring rain
turning dying brown into living green
and deer drink again from flowing streams.
As raindrops kiss your neck, and
a gentle breeze wraps around your waist,
and butterflies dance with you in the woods,
let it be, love, let yourself go
breathe it all in as far as it can go.
Surrender to the invisible presence,
and feel me enter you for the first time.
– Michael Sudduth
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