Poem9.16.2019


THE POEM UNDONE

To be addressed at a beach

she thought most square.

To be called to a window to see

what ought to be heard.

What might sting like a mosquito

infecting one with knowledge.

She thought of Yeats, of Leda, of time,

the coming of a terrifying swan.

Did he say the sea's calm, tamed by moonbeams,

when sound visualized is turbulent?

Is music's allegory of war

no more than conceits of violence

gathering to clash in the death of light?

How violated can a body be?

What's put in pain

by a mosquito's ignorant gift,

by its eternal tweet of sadness,

by retarded misery's ebb and flow

and slow torture of climate changing?

Such faith, such hope, such charity

did Antigone, imitating Isis,  sprinkle on a corpse.

Honi  soit qui mal y pense

and mea culpa invades the heart.

Tragedy has gone with the breeze

somewhere to fall apart in another country,

t o alarm with lack of joy, love, light,

certitude, peace impossible for bloody jewels to restore.

She thought he murmured a snatch of fatal allegory:

"…let us be true/ to one another!"

She thought she was a dream, a dissonance

arising from a mosquito's donation.

She thought of her mind and his

sinking in the quicksand of a beach

as poetic armies clashed that night.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            September 16, 2019

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