A season to live outside yourself

Another Empire

One more time I love you.
A leaf that has never fallen, does.
It settles in a place no one sees.

We were like this. You with
the nobility of your blood;
me with piracy on my breath.

There was the way you looked
in the morning, in glasses, dream-
weary, a threshold of possibility.



I could hold you that way and never
leave my senses. There were a thousand
things about you because a thousand

means numberlessness to a poet.
There were days with end, nights with
endlessnesses that passed like pharaohs.

Autumn thinks it’s summer and
in doing so makes of you a season
to live outside yourself for a time.



I can no longer curry your voice
and thus I make this season so, in
your honor, in your blessed name.

Remember the tangrams of flesh we
made, temples built of rain and glass?
A mansoon, I was alive inside you.

One more time, I love you.
I fall again, again again.
Another empire misplaced.

Joseph Gallo
October 24, 2007