We are the few who cross the low dunes
after the sun has set in the gulf
to applause and to thanks and raised glasses,
we are the few who sit on warm sand
after the others have gone to their cars,
alone with with the sea that keeps to itself,
alone with our losses in the deepening night,
staring into the starlanes, the endless tunnels
of nothing – it begins with only one star,
when only one star is all that we wanted.
—with a phrase by Mark Strand.
