Emma Wilson-Kanamori
Lament for the King of Kings

I met a traveller from a foreign land
who said he knew what it was like
to listlessly watch the horizon expand
and, paused, have fleeting dreams strike.

(My dreaming companion, your breathless laugh
-   your smile that casts the stars in your eyes
-     has always brought me back to your half
of those sleepless nights and unknowing lies.)

I never knew a passion before
you sternly insisted my virtues.
Learning to love is a form of war,
yet war is not the art I choose.
Your hands shirk shy of violence
but your eyes shine bright with riot;
I wonder, for now, in years hence,
if you will measure me in your disquiet.

Here, then, my confession and trial:
I am Lazarus in mercurial crown.
I confess to love, my tragic fall,
the Göta älv in which I drown.
I confess I know you more than you know,
and that I know myself least of all.
I know you care more than you show;
that it will take two to break your wall.

I rose out of the ash on your blessing
and I promised to gift you a poem.
Here, I give you, a belated coalescing
-     a shattered, frowning totem
as of the visage of the king of kings,
whose sculptor in passions was well read.
Here, my heart, sliced into wings,
Inking out that left unsaid:

“I met a traveller from a foreign land,
and I looked in him, to his despair.
He stood alone in the level sand
and I chose that I would stay there.”