Look by Michael Lee Lyrics
Driving beyond the city, beyond
cattle grazing, the long evening shadows
grazing on light until it is gone,
and the city is gone, I catch a glimpse
of a house just beyond the road. In its one lit window-
like a floating television in the dark-
a couple makes love. The man holds the woman
from behind by the hips, and she sinks
into him, open, as though asking
him to become her entirely,
but the man looks past her, through the window,
his gaze a kind of shadow wandering
through dusk into the hills, then beyond them
as if she is only a telescope to him,
as if, when he is inside her, he can see
a different life, one which contains neither of them.
I don’t believe I have ever seen a man so desperate
to leave, to enter a woman entirely so as to simply
pass through her and become, perhaps, a thought
she once had as a girl, become the morning
breeze or her bedroom curtains shifting quietly
like an Ivory Gull descending. His eyes scan
the horizon-the last of the sun a simple red sliver
of light, a dim lamp shining from beneath the crack
of a great door-and it is this gaze I carry with me.
Not the gaze of my mother or father
as they closed my bedroom door as a boy
and watched the dark fold over my face-
and then, one day, never looked at me this way again-
nor the gaze of the woman I loved
the many times we parted at airports and train stations
until eventually we parted and she did not look back,
not that of my grandmother, only bones and a hospital gown,
as she said my name and then turned towards the wall
forever. Not the abandoned calf before it was taken
into the woods and shot, not my childhood dog
before we drove her quietly to a quieter death.
Eventually, everything that can look, will
look upon us for the last time,
and our memory, which is a kind of faith,
will be unable to carry even itself.
Only the gaze of this nameless man
will remain, floating in a box of light, the planet
watching him stare out into the dark living room of the earth.
cattle grazing, the long evening shadows
grazing on light until it is gone,
and the city is gone, I catch a glimpse
of a house just beyond the road. In its one lit window-
like a floating television in the dark-
a couple makes love. The man holds the woman
from behind by the hips, and she sinks
into him, open, as though asking
him to become her entirely,
but the man looks past her, through the window,
his gaze a kind of shadow wandering
through dusk into the hills, then beyond them
as if she is only a telescope to him,
as if, when he is inside her, he can see
a different life, one which contains neither of them.
I don’t believe I have ever seen a man so desperate
to leave, to enter a woman entirely so as to simply
pass through her and become, perhaps, a thought
she once had as a girl, become the morning
breeze or her bedroom curtains shifting quietly
like an Ivory Gull descending. His eyes scan
the horizon-the last of the sun a simple red sliver
of light, a dim lamp shining from beneath the crack
of a great door-and it is this gaze I carry with me.
Not the gaze of my mother or father
as they closed my bedroom door as a boy
and watched the dark fold over my face-
and then, one day, never looked at me this way again-
nor the gaze of the woman I loved
the many times we parted at airports and train stations
until eventually we parted and she did not look back,
not that of my grandmother, only bones and a hospital gown,
as she said my name and then turned towards the wall
forever. Not the abandoned calf before it was taken
into the woods and shot, not my childhood dog
before we drove her quietly to a quieter death.
Eventually, everything that can look, will
look upon us for the last time,
and our memory, which is a kind of faith,
will be unable to carry even itself.
Only the gaze of this nameless man
will remain, floating in a box of light, the planet
watching him stare out into the dark living room of the earth.