The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7

We are the necromancers who once more

magically make visible the night

recapture that obscure obscene delight

fathom its undertow and in one net

fish up foul fables we must not forget

have them alive and slippery in our hands:

what are we but divided selves that move

to find in all that glittering thrash our love?

We’ll summon in one dream all motives forth

and you shall be the south and I the north

and we will speak that language of the brain

that’s half of Portugal or all of Spain

or of those yet unsounded seas

that westward spawn beneath the menstrual moon:

what are we but divided souls that live

or strive to in the sundered self of love?

Splinter the light and it will dream a rainbow

loosen the rainbow it will stream in light

divide the brightness and you’ll build a wall.

But we’ll a twilight be, a go-between

of midnight and of daybreak, and beget

marvels and monsters we must not forget:

these are the language that love dared not speak

without which we can neither make nor break.