Coming Becomes You

Dennis Lee
From:   Nightwatch: New & Selected Poems 1968-1996. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996.

                        Coming be-
            comes you,
                              little one:
      rockabye world as you lie, and the great pang takes you in
                        waves.       Coming
            becomes you.

                  With horses you come, with arabian
                                    slather with jugular grunts and in
      fretwork, in fistfuls, on Fridays we come in the
                                                danger and midnight of horses.
                              Coming you come like a spill, like a
            spell, like a spoonful of flesh in the
                        roaring, high on blood
ocean, come with your horses, you come to be played.

                  In after-
                                come, you nuzzle;
      you nestle and noodle and nest.
                                                        And the ghosts in your eyes
            do their long-legged, chaste parade.
                              Each time such sadness
                                                hushes me: slow
            ache in your gaze—nostalgia for
                                    now, for now as it
                  goes away.       You're
      beautiful, small
                        queen of the pillow drowse, and
                  rockabye world in my arms.
                                          Coming becomes you.

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Dennis Lee's works copyright © to the author.