The Kiss
by Ales Debeljak
How it rises out of waves in the bay
and shudders like a gentle thrust
of the sea, which sooner forgives
than punishes, doomed as it is to feckless birth.
How it wakes me up, takes me inside
with a slender hand, with shimmering dust,
gliding like a guess or premonition, up and up
to the eyelashes, the eyebrows, the mouth
and spilling across the face and over the ears,
where the cries of gulls are caught.
A hymn to the moment that lasts
and lasts, so nothing belonging together
will separate, like a boat that worries only about
its arrival in the harbor, dropping its anchor
next to a dock, so the story will reach
the close it was meant to reach. And the sailor,
once turned to a pillar of salt, will forever remain
doubled over, where lobes of water
linger like wedding guests
years after the flood has folded back.
