in tribute to Tom Stoppard



We sing to each other and sing to each other

across a chasm of broken seashells.

We have not met, you and I,

for a long time — or was it never?
One of us always diffuse, escaping

as gas while the other

weatherproofs windows and doors, trying

to keep out cold.
There is still love — there is that —

ethereal, vanishing

known to poets and lunatics

from time immemorial.
Byron’s dream: “there’s poetry for you” –

four lines about a dead earth,

a starless night; our pointless orbit

iterated beyond repair.  Out of time,
the song returns to me across the void

and I wonder where we will find space

for what we once dreamed.  We sing

at cross-purposes:
discordant, determined.

Isolate in our sanities.

To hear the tune,

you’d have to be insane.