NAMES

Daybreak. The horizon
Opens its eyelashes
And begins to see. What? Names.
They are on the patina

Of things. The rose
Is today still
Called rose, and the memory
Of its passage, haste,

Haste to live more.
Through long love let that
Sour thrust of the Moment
Raise us up, so agile

That once it reaches its goal
It hurries to impose an Afterwards.
Alert, alert, alert,
I will be, I will be.

And what of the roses? Eyelashes
Closed; final
Horizon. Perhaps nothing?
But the names remain.