The World Stops

You look into my eyes
and the whole world stops —
the whole world but the rain stops.

The hunter chasing a deer halts for a moment mid-path.
A tired bus driver jolts awake at a bend.
A mugger leaves his knife in the pocket of yesterday's coat.
The countdown of a prisoner sentenced to death stops when a woman forgives him,
and a mother's heart consents to her daughter's heart beating in another chest.
A little further on, a woman at a mirror comes to believe in the beauty of her own eyes.
A boy passing a half-built building is two steps ahead of a falling brick —
how many of the world's mistakes are mended in that moment! —
a tired clerk, after so long, feels like calling his mother from the office phone,
and love, behind the frozen window of pride, shows its wounded hands for a moment.
You look into my eyes and on the shore someone hears a cry for help,
and a factory manager, greeting his distracted guard, doubts the sad tone of his "I'm fine".

We look into each other's eyes —
as if this moment, this look, were our whole mission in the world,
all that the hands of the two of us can do for it.