Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Behind, Where, Where Was a, Where Was a Place?


Through the father, through the feather of a son’s face
Through the mother, through her daughter’s grace
Waste, the latest moon tangled in the trees tonight
Chaste as filthy syllables, the sordid words heroic
Couplets break against, shatter on the very lips
Through the promise, through the hope of snow
Through the lies, through the night whelms it whelms
Stupendous would-be thaw of spring, the rain
Before us what, what will we, what will we pray?
When even poetry deceives us in such dry days
What small salvation do we hope to drink?
O we taste more than angels what it means to doubt—
Not O not the mind with all its mountains all its water
But the heart, the soul, the thing we thirst to write

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