Errantia Cordis
—The Heart’s Wandering—
I went abroad to trace thee.
But the first step faltered—
for the heart had already begun
to trace me.
The heart keeps maps
of places the earth has never known.
Thus we wander, it and I,
through hedges that refuse a road.
Fields lie mute beneath the wind.
Each step invents
a further absence.
I questioned dusk—
ancient registrar of partings—
whether thy shadow crossed its amber courts.
It answered with crows.
Yet once—
within the skull’s dim firmament—
a brightness tore the dark:
A ladder of fire
rose through the mind.
Each rung remembered thee.
I climbed.
But heaven refused its grammar.
Then grief struck iron—
and rhyme, compelled by pain, declared:
Return, return—where’er thou art concealed,
For night grows vast, and solitude unhealed.
The echo faded.
Grass bent.
Clouds deliberated.
Stars convened their patient parliament.
And then the thought—
slow, terrible, luminous—
descended:
Perhaps it was never I who sought thee,
but thou who placed the map within my heart.
Beloved—
thy habitation I know not.
Yet I carry a small compass of bone;
its needle trembles, turning always
toward the place where thou art not.
Still it leads.
And I begin to see:
Each step was learning
the absence that would draw it.
So long as breath inhabits this mortal province
my heart proceeds—
not toward a place,
but along the path
thy absence has already drawn.
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