History, by Eric Ormsby

This is our history.

The place is empty now where we began.

The rooms are full of sunlight, and the sea

effaces all the traces where we ran.

I dreamt about the world before I was,

that darkened curve of shore, the stark

clarity of coral undersea. Does

broken coastline demarcate the dark

of unbeginning daylight? Now I see

the twining light with all the dark I can.

This is our history:

The place is empty now where we began.

From “For a Modest God: New and Selected Poems” by Eric Ormsby. (Grove Press: 139 pp., $20.) Copyright 1997 Reprinted by permission.