Poetry & Poets

with Dana Ward

Someone said you were dead
it’ s not that I didn’ t care
You were not bacterial
You were not frozen water in winter
You were not a hairbrush broken by hair
You were a treasure of gold in the world-toilet
For you appraised the world of grains
And flung the earth to the earth
The good wine is mixed with the bad wine,
come to the wine jar’ s lips and let’ s unmix it
Poor people only have one soul
but you and I have two
let’ s go on vacation to Mexico or Rome
Everybody returns home

Stand to one side. No, over here with me:
out of the light but out of darkness too,
where everything that is not odd or old
is gold and subjugates the shadows. There,
now you will be no trouble and behold none —
anything but trouble, at first glance,
last chance to see what I say is worth a look.

The heart dies without space for love, without a moral horizon:
think of it then as a bird trapped in a box.
My heart goes out with love to those beyond the fence;
only toward them can one really advance, that is, make progress.
Without them I feel I’ m half a person.
Romeo was born a Montague, and Juliet came from the Capulet line,
and I’ m a disciple of Shakespeare, not Ben Gurion —
therefore I’ ll be delighted if my daughter marries the grandson of Haidar Abdel Shafi.

I’ ll tell you, if you really want to know:
remember that day you lost two years ago
at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler
with all those stones you’ d stolen from the shore?
Most of them went dark and nothing more,
but sometimes one would blink the secret color
it had locked up somewhere in its stony sleep.
This is how you knew the ones to keep.

You give me a little courage, Mary,
in your skittish dedication to her highness;
I too can dare as humbleness may dare;
if there’ s anywhere to speak with you, it’ s here
at the wordy Anglo-Saxon periphery
of the universe’ s one great surge of praise

though I’ m lost here. Where’ s the joyful noise?
the syllables I managed to memorize
before they were weighted down by meaning?
and what’ s all this complicated rhyme?
Don’ t mistake me — I’ m not complaining;
it’ s just not my notion of a psalm

It had better been hidden
But the Poets inform:
We are chattel and liege
Of an undying Worm.

Were you, Will, disheartened,
When all Stratford’ s gentry
Left their Queen and took service
In his low-lying country?

How many white cities
And grey fleets on the storm
Have proud-builded, hard-battled,
For this undying Worm?

Know you fair, on what you look;
Divinest love lies in this book,
Expecting fire from your eyes,
To kindle this his sacrifice.
When your hands untie these strings,
Think you’ have an angel by th’ wings.
One that gladly will be nigh,
To wait upon each morning sigh.
To flutter in the balmy air
Of your well-perfumed prayer.
These white plumes of his he’ ll lend you,
Which every day to heaven will send you,
To take acquaintance of the sphere,
And all the smooth-fac’ d kindred there.

On rain washed paper dried, ink
still blurs. But all words
are stains. The paper’ s rippled
lunar, mountain and crater,

and seas on the moon, misnomer
of plains that looked like
water once, no-end-to-it shadows,
fractal to fractal. The telescope’ s eye

fooled the eye. From there, does
earth rise and set? Or a thrush,
would it sing its trouble backward? —
the most private tremor first, then

It’ s now all about money
about which poetry rarely reaches
transcendence. But love must still fester
even under that. Everyone I know
frets if poetry can still matter,
but what about love? It’ s all become
too much for them, and they’ re all
on the soma. It makes sense
with these pills when the someone
they thought they loved for years
by never thinking about it says,
“I don’ t love you anymore,
but let’ s stay friends in that mellow
woebegone way poetry now
sings without singing.” Of course,