May 23, 2011
Poem of Questions
How strong is the beauty that calls to you?
Does anybody hold it always as a guide–or
is it the search that is required of us? Is there
rest in beauty? Or does the best of what we may
know require battering waves? Times we have loved
brought to ruin, and new times asking: How will I
rise to take my punishment, so that love
will again name itself the only path?
We turn to the dark for an end;
we walk out of it by knowing we have loved.
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Sharon Olds, The Winter After Your Death
The long bands of mellow light
across the snow
narrowly.
The sun closes her gold fan
and nothing is left but black and white –
the quick steam of my breath, the dead
accurate shapes of the weeds, still, as if
pressed in an album.
Deep in my body my green heart
turns, and thinks of you. Deep in the
pond, under the thick trap
door of ice, the water moves,
the carp hangs like a sun, its scarlet
heart visible in its side.
Yes, this is splendid. Mine violates Pound’s injunction to “go in fear of abstractions.” I wanted to be concrete but–no footing. Only bourbon at the moment.
Cooper Esteban, Lost Song
I walk with not you
beside me: this is
a stamina I
did not know I had.
Louise Gluck, Messengers
You have only to wait, they will find you.
The geese flying low over the marsh,
glittering in black water.
They find you.
And the deer—
how beautiful they are,
as though their bodies did not impede them.
Slowly they drift into the open
through bronze panels of sunlight.
Why would they stand so still
if they were not waiting?
Almost motionless, until their cages rust,
the shrubs shiver in the wind,
squat and leafless.
You have only to let it happen:
that cry—release, release—like the moon
wrenched out of earth and rising
full in its circle of arrows
until they come before you
like dead things, saddled with flesh,
and you above them, wounded and dominant.
And the epitome.
Yes, Cindy reads “the River Merchant’s Wife” very well, as you know.
Okay, here’s my second poem of questions:
What found my hand there, in
the cistern with yours–reaching
for the same lost ring?
And what sort of fish was it
that brought its neon windows by
more quickly than mouths
move when disclaiming intent?
The plash abolished faces that
reformed, anew, and then there was
no thought of what reaching sought.
For the record, I love this interchange between Deron and Daryl. For those who haven’t, to sit in space with them together or apart. I just sat listening. Beautiful.