On Poetry

By night, I have studied the wildest odes of love,
Absorbed the least censured lessons of longing.

And here I behold that your heart harbours a secret logic of its own,
As severe as that of the best poetry; yet more difficult, and subtle, and more complex than that of a thousand sleepless nights.

Every beat of it holds no mercy for this fugitive,
And yet with every beat of it, I am more and more dependent on its beating.

Those beats that are like my muse’s daughters,
Borne of singing for me, alone,
Yet unsupported by a sense of sound.

I would permit these failed imitations of you, my Iove,
So to accumulate enough of you to be looked at over again.

And yet, with equal force my sight is pulled away from them,
By the plainer words of dignity,
Of which I cannot pass over in silence.

Those four or five words of a sentence
That might yet form awhole,
and find an appropriate place of rest under my breath and breast.

That most unsatisfying answer of an irrevocable verdict she will not give me.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

when the jury comes back with its verdict and it does not favor us with her love...
the silence in this poem speaks volumes...the secret logic is good logic.
j.