The text from my poem

Sorry, guys. It looked a whole lot better in MovieMaker, and even when I played it on Blogger just before it posted. So here's the text. It might actually be better to read the text, then look at the movie -- since the "animations" are more for mood and a/effect, than anything else.

A letter to his lover, after reading Marlowe (“A Passionate Shepherd to His Love”)

Istanbul, Turkey, 23 October

There is no phone, no fridge,
but there is a house.

It is an old woman’s house, with musty
sheets and old furniture and stale
yellowed windows;
two small beds and a pull-out couch;
nothing in the kitchen but a hot plate
and a few dinged pots.

But there is a house.

we have not had rain in weeks.
The clouds never melt,
and the sky never opens its fist to release
raindrops that crawl like marbles
onto the desert ground:
a desert without a sun.

Through the clouds somewhere I know you are sleeping
turning over in a place I have never seen,
your body silent, still, never letting go
of my shadow that lingers still, on your breath.

I am alone here, in this house
where so many others have left
their residue, and every time I open the door
the lonely ghost of guilt ambles over
and takes my coat.
No, I say, we have not had rain in weeks,
but there is this house.

Darling I cannot give you the poem you need
the poem with its lady twirling among roses
and a gentleman watching, intent, sweeping
her away to his quiet quarters.

I cannot give you that. We
we have not had rain in weeks.

But there is a house.