On Poetry | 1-10
Every poem is a stream,
flowing into a river
to reach the sea
1.
In Your Hand
This poem
is disposable:
crumple it.
throw it away,
but remember
it is my heart
you have
in your hand.
Maybe now
you will listen.
2.
Poetry is what
goes missing
when you wake
in the morning
and don’t hear
the silent singalong
of the one, still asleep,
who dreams of you.
3.
I forgot myself
and heard the wind
in my words
and only now
does a sparrow sing
in my ear:
There’s still hope
you will come
with the rain
and bring your flowers.
4.
Mnemosyne
Memory, speak for me:
the kiss, the girl
I lost; the road
that became a song;
ever the moon
loves a stranger;
the poems that say
more than I know
are my afterlife.
5.
You speak and disappear
through a crack in the wall.
I hear your voice as my own,
I was never here. Still
this poem begins and ends.
There’s more to come.
Something’s there in light,
a voiceless thing
whose words I write.
6.
Lucubrations
It took all of thirty seconds
to get this right. If there’s insight
into the human heart, it’s yours, not mine.
So many times I’ve worked all night,
driving nails into my brain.
When morning came,
there was no verse worth the candle,
but just now when I had given up,
words with wings flew around my head
and so, glad at heart, I can claim to be
a poet again and fall dead asleep.
7.
Poetry is inspired song. The breath is the soul of the poem. The poet gathers the air around, the blue from the sky and her curling eyes, the warmth from the sun and hislover’s body… and sings. The air is measured, the lover’s body rolls with the waves and her eyes become one with the night. In the morning, the poet crawls out of the skylike a bear, stretching full out, searching again for the sweetness, searching in the movement of cloud and leaf and desire. He sings. If his words resound in skin andbone, in the stone-cold night, if he enchants the air with his song — it is poetry.
Metaphor is the mystery. The poetic act is both a participation in and apprehension ofthat mystery. A poem may affect us by its lyricism and its passion, by its matchingsound with sense — but without metaphor and the mystery it confers, poetry belongs solely to the decorative or rhetorical arts. It is by metaphor that a poem draws us back again and again to trace the lines that lead to the heart of being and to ourselves.
The meaning of a poem comes not from the words, but from the transmutation that occurs in the heart of the poet at the time the poem is written. In all poetry that is notsimply decorative, there is an elemental activity of consciousness, a sustained goldenmoment that triumphs over raw experience. The meaning of a poem is that activity of mind, sovereign over the despair that the words of the poem may convey.
8.
THE NIGHT ABOVE THE DINGLE STARRY
I am not far
from No Man’s
Last Gas & Grill.
When you’ve gone
as far as you can,
there you find
all the poets
you have loved:
Yeats, who yodels
no tomorrows,
and Dylan Thomas,
who’s still drinking
for all the others
who sing in turn
verba sua supersubstantialia
that, like our daily bread,
keep them alive.
Then, as if you know
where you’re going,
you wave goodbye
and leave the poets
in the dust.
The only sign
along the road
is a Great Horse
of the Sea,
baring its teeth
at the dawn,
ever and never
coming on.
You run out of gas
but travel fast
and see the night
with Dylan’s eyes.
9.
From Prose to Poetry
Butterflies
for Sasha
Since no one else had the time, the old man had come out to the field with the child who was now jumping about, fluttering in the distance among the flowers and long grass, the border of dark trees like a commentary on the futility of it all. The child was set on catching a butterfly, though on that late spring day there were no butterflies. The child did not seem to mind, leaping now here now there, the butterflies seemingly just out of reach. Then the old man saw something in the distance that seemed to float just above the long grass. He looked long and hard and for the life of him he could not distinguish the child from a butterfly. When the child returned, sansbutterfly, all red and green, happily exhausted, pointing out to the field, asking if he could return tomorrow to try again to catch a butterfly, the old man smiled and silently took the child’s hand. Years later, when the child had become a man, he would return to the field and find his grandpa waiting for him.
Far Afield
for Sasha
Since no one else had the time,
the old man came with the child
to see if the stories were true.
The child grew wings of gold and green.
Years later, the child returned
to find his grandpa among the flowers.
10.
All of It
for Pauline Eaton
In the beginning Love was so alone in the darkness
only by chance did he know he was there.
In that Time before time,
he discovered that if he whirled like a dervish
feathery bits and pieces of his colossal body
became flames and feathers.
Some had the shape of white linen, others bats.
Farther off, bits of silver and gold
arranged themselves as constellations,
though their great stories had not yet been told.
Theseus had not yet sailed for Crete.
Having never seen himself,
he looked upon this luminous jumble
as simply Other
and called it Friend.
Then, seized by what we would call inspiration,
he let out whoops of joy:
SAL-WAY-TE
WA-LAY-TE
Sound and sense began to attract and repel each other.
In what would seem to us an endless instant
strange figures, stiff as dolls, began to appear.
Love was surprised to discover
his breath could bring them to life.
He was even able to forget
all their laughter and quarreling
were no more than himself.
Soon they vied for his favor,
throwing their own limbs into the fire.
Others burned themselves as torches.
Only then did he stop his spinning
and take up knitting.
He worked seven days, weaving together
scraps of bone and soul, dreaming while still awake,
and then at last fell asleep.
When he woke,
there stood before him a winged Other.
Love called her Anima.
She felt as close to him
as breath to wind.
ANIMA ANIMUS
ANIMUS ANIMA
After each cycle of seven days of waking dreams
he would fall asleep,
and upon waking discover other winged forms.
He named them
Twilight and Shadow,
Dawn and Cobweb,
Shifting Sand,
Trumpet,
Midnight Blue.
They brought him
earth, air, fire, and water
as gifts.
In return,
Love dreamed a world for them.