Cosmonaut
We should have left the fortune teller's
and gone out into the streets of Rotterdam
looking for drinks and girls
when she mistook us for boyfriends
instead of brothers, but we stayed anyway,
because we were already drunk and the girls
all liked other boys.
My head was spinning as I sat beside you,
across from her, with her silk scarves and
Romanian cigarettes. I was disappointed
there was no crystal ball in the center
of the round table, just a blank,
red tableclothed surface. She demanded your hand,
and you obliged, putting one palm up.
She took it - Madame Cecilie, her name just
came back to me - almost sensuously, as though
she wanted to lift it to her lips and lick your fingers.
She traced the long line across your palm,
and asked your name and age. It is strange
to say, but I have always loved your hands:
long-fingered, slender and tapering, clean and smooth,
small-knuckled, a piano player's hands.
They are just like mine, and I love my own hands.
Madame then asked for mine, and I laid it palm up
as well, and she traced my lines, asked my name and age.
The basement room is hot, and in the small doorway
hung with long beads behind her, I can see a small
girl standing watching us, holding a small cup of tea.
She bent over our hands, eyelashes fluttering on our palms,
then sat up, her eyes closed and said in a husky voice,
There are stars and there is blackness between stars.
There is morning, day, evening, but only is there night
when the sun sets. There is the sea and the rain,
yet what is the sea but a multitude of rain?
This is not a fortune, she said, and stood. She went into the back
and returned with a bottle of red wine and three glasses.
She poured and gave us each a glass, lifted her own and said,
To the blackness between stars, and gulped hers down.
It sounded ominous; you looked at me and I saw fear
in the drunken blear of your eye. We drank anyway.
You, she said, pointing at you, will bear an unbearable journey.
You, she said, pointing to me, will not bear his unbearable journey.
This is a fortune. She held out her hand palm up, and I dug into
the pockets of my tight jeans and gave her money.
We left, thanking her, laughing under our breaths,
into the cool, wet night. I looked up, you put your arm
around my shoulder, and we stood staring at the
blackness between stars, and I understood what Madame
had meant.
The night you died, I carried you in my arms
under stars into the hospital. They wheeled you away
and I stood outside and counted the empty places
above, and I remembered hearing that all the
starlight we see is hurtling across the cosmos
from stars that are already dead and have sent their
final blasts of radiance outward.
If we had left her shop, I thought, and stopped,
because light will travel for
tens of thousands of years,
if only it is seen.