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Overloading the Machine

Last Thursday

Resistance. Channel clicks.
On our walk we turned up stories
Reaching the sky, to climb later.
What fruit rolling in the bowl
You felt me. We explained,
Young, late and invigorated
In the flecked mirror. All patient, insistent.
Past the punctured seams the gown drifts
One early-on press. Coax,
We turned a dry topic or two,
Somber dances of holding out,
You were irrevocable, marching as minutes
The sun couldn't tick, recoiling at some failed mission.
And serene. Arcs to electric,
The path vanishing in twist.
A test
Wrinkles the eyes on either side
These years one visit. It boiled
Rust water of news. It sought
Too much essence in all encounters. From each time bargained
An etched trinket. But observe, incessant plan:
We fly confident. To red box the calendar
On the lover's wall. No doubting hours, the fingertips.

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

-- Samuel Beckett