XII

You pass like a scandal through the streets.

Among the green old men of the trees
light imagines you,
as it places its spider on your shirt
with a merciless invitation
to bear the dark, fugitive
will of bliss.

You pass like skin under a hand,
train smoke, that broken silence.

And I am the city as I look at you,
that heat of plastics and bodies
that would like to suddenly possess you
with its stained arm.
                But only the afternoon
may welcome the lost footsteps,
the worn blue of your jeans,
the path of your eyes and the ships
when you round the corner.