In Her Own House

In Her Own House

In the year 2000
I left my wife, for one girl,
then another. I was falling
off the mountain. I had a disease
of the spirit. The man had lost
his center. The pain of the
dissolution was intense.
I remembered that. I also
still hear the crying, the terrible
noise that love makes when
it tears in two after 28 years.
It was April in Sapporo when
I arrived to live with Yuko.
Snow fell continuously into
the ground, an all day
white oppression of the Earth.
My heart had no house.
Outside of where I slept,
the streets were somber, and all
were suffering from the
sunless winter. Just the
school girls passing with their socks
rolled down. Sometimes I went
shopping and took my place in line,
kept my secrets to myself,
and tried to go on loving Yuko.
To lift her up beside me
and hold her, like a star burning
my hand. My dream was of shutting
down the pain and sorrow.
The choir, and the classic loss.
How to move it around.
How to bring into perspective.
Sometimes in the little apartment
with the electric heat and the quiet,
I tried to work that sorrow
into a corner. To keep it there
in the dark, and stop its breeding.
When I failed, I failed hard,
and sat up nights by the little
curtained window staring out,
trying to touch the love I knew,
trying to get my direction.

Barry Tagrin

from "Collage of the Soul".