called you from your idle
dream-workshop with the subtle spanners,
half-speeches, after keeping
you up late as my youth last night, later
than the gods’ twilight, who witnessed your trials
at fixing kinks in my causal body, just before sleep.
(Though I guess now that gods do sleep, I don’t know where.)
I watched a star burn through your wall-length windows
—no sun of ours, we were long past
midnight—resplendent fire raging far more
distant, more dead. Pur ti miro, you showed me,
Pur ti stringo, pur ti godo. I felt closer than
ever to inspiration—each breath into passive lungs—
while your fingers pressed behind my neck.
Pur t’annodo: I enchain you, I tie you down.
You left me asleep on the couch, and I thought by
dawn I’d sneak in beside your soul. But
a blessed light came disrupting the blind-
fold and blinds, and instead I woke you with Wagner.
Copyright © 2025 by Logan February. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 17, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
