My body on this hard bed.

I want to die on your chest but not yet,
she wrote, sometime in the 13th century
of our love

before the yellow age of paper

before her story became a song,

lost in imprecise reproductions

until caught in jade,

whose spectum could hold the black greens

the chalk-blue of her eyes in daylight.

***

Our altering love, our moonless faith.

Last ink in the pen.

My body on this hard bed.

The moment in the heart
where I roam restless, searching

for the thin border of the fence to break through or leap.

Leaping and bowing.

(from "Last Ink in the Pen", by Mr. Micheal Ondaatje)