If in the presentation, I choose to
hug the bark of strange trees,
I’ll hope with rushes plunging
from softened eyes that those roots
like hands, can form their gesture
of prayer to a man with his years in ruin,
with his gaze always looking away
from a rotting sun in a fatal distance.
Whoever thought that sadness could melt?
Whoever thought that a statue
could lessen in its life, could never breathe
without the hushed exhales of a hollowed out,
wilted soul? I find my path in these marks,
these etches within random growth.
For all faith has left, with more tears
I did not know could be wept.
Throughout. With this solitary heartbeat,
curtains were torn away from these eyes.
I told countless souls to drift apart
from mine, that I could taste bitterness
in a singular flavor of wine.
Without – while all pain had been repeated,
snow kept falling from clouds, like cotton,
soft enough, for Heaven’s dead,
hard enough that nothing might ever
return to search the dust in this heart –
a nothingness of everything said.
If leaves were caught together,
if speech was like ripples in crude fabric,
I might be able to pull apart autumn scenery
stuck inside aching hands. I might
be able to create tidal waves out of stillness,
be able to return from what freezes me
in brandings, in irons, in labels.
Modern Romanticism 