Embrace

Mutsuo Takahashi. Poems of a Penisist. Translated by Hiroaki Sato (1975; reprinted by University of Minnesota Press, 2012). The volume opens with a poem "Dove" which establishes a to and fro between the speaker and the one we take to be the love interest. Here is a little of their exchange from the middle of the poem:

I like its eyes, he said and touched them
I like its beak too, I said and touched it.

The back and forth is resolved in the last stanza by an image of release and embrace:

I love you, he said and let the dove go
It's gone, I murmured
In his arms

The murmuring seems to cover both the reported speech and the reporting and thus bring the past into the present. There is a lingering at work.

And so for day 950
20.07.2009