Waterloo

Dawn Potter

 

 

We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most

intimate.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, “To Hölderlin” 

 

 

The lindens in the square tremble

in the wind like peasants kissing the feet

of Jesus. They lift their arms and wail,

and I have read of such kissing,

read of how bodies drown.

The sky grows. Agnès, who is busy and shy,

 

weeps to hear the peasants weeping,

weeps for the lindens buckling into the wind.

In the square, horses clatter and rear, their hooves

ring on the cobblestones. Drowning and wrath,

drowning and wrath, night and day, but Agnès

is kissing the wind, weeping,

 

as the lindens sway, as the lindens tremble.

I have read of such kissing. 

[first published in Live Encounters; forthcoming in my collection Calendar]