The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write

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The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write Page 2

by Gregory Orr


  11. A Committed Life

  “What are you looking at?”

  My mother asked.

  “Nothing,”

  I answered.

  “I thought

  So,” and she turned away.

  But I continued to study

  Nothing. Noted its features,

  Its calm demeanor; its smooth

  Uninflected surfaces.

  Later,

  In large books, I read

  About nothing—theories

  Of nothing, histories

  Of nothing. Over the years,

  Nothing revealed to me

  Its heights and depths.

  Almost without knowing it,

  I had become an expert

  On nothing. People sought

  My opinion about it.

  “Nothing is important,”

  I told them.

  They were

  Impressed. They lured me

  To a great university;

  They begged me to teach

  All I knew about nothing.

  It seemed only reasonable:

  A final flowering of my life’s

  Passionate commitment to nothing.

  12. Not Without Risks

  Nothing has changed

  For me.

  Gone are

  Her smiles—

  Transparent,

  Terrifying.

  Gone, the ways

  In which

  Nothing pleased me.

  I think back to when

  Nothing

  Was everything

  To me

  And filled my world.

  I was afraid

  I would lose

  Nothing if she changed.

  My fears proved true.

  13. That It Cares Deeply

  So many people I loved

  Are now a part of nothing.

  Nothing took them in

  Out of the cold

  Where they stood,

  Shivering and patient,

  Hoping to again

  Be part of something,

  Which is,

  Of course, impossible.

  When you die, nothing

  Has room for you.

  Nothing makes a place

  For you in its spacious

  Domain.

  You dwell there,

  And nothing cares for you.

  Reading Dickinson

  If you ask me, when God

  Speaks

  From the whirlwind,

  The syllables He utters

  Are guttural,

  Crude, destructive.

  I prefer Emily’s music

  That seems to issue

  From a pool

  Whose spiral motion

  Is pulling her in and down.

  Each poem is a whorled

  Shell

  I hold to my ear.

  Roar of the Abyss?

  Yes, but above it,

  Her clear

  And human voice,

  Singing as she drowns.

  Lines Standing in for Religious Conviction

  Truth of it is: I was born

  With an empty center.

  When I find myself there,

  It’s often despair.

  But now and then, it’s Zen.

  A leap of faith from a cliff?

  I prefer hope

  And bring my own rope.

  A focused love is a doubled

  Devotion—each shrine

  I build deepens my mind.

  Only when I yearn, do I learn.

  And what helps me grow is holy.

  Ode to Some Lyric Poets

  . . . certain poems in an uncertain world

  1.

  “Audacity of Bliss”—that’s what

  Emily Dickinson called it.

  More than once I’ve felt it

  And knew if I could

  Turn it into words and share it,

  I’d have a reason to live

  And no matter

  How badly

  Life turned out, I could bear it.

  I cherish that night she woke me

  To hear her recite:

  “Before and After—Vanished—

  There is only—Now.

  A Kiss—Appropriate

  On its shining Brow.”

  Who only a year earlier,

  Had appeared in another

  Dream to announce:

  “We are bound by words

  And wonder to the world.”

  Then she scowled and smiled

  At the same time,

  And told me to write it down.

  Who was I to disagree?

  2. To Hart Crane

  This huge bridge, cabled

  Harp strung

  Between two cities,

  Heart stretched

  Taut

  Between two shores.

  It’s here you paused

  Where others

  Had stood

  Who couldn’t stand

  The tension

  And chose to leap.

  You didn’t—you chose to sing.

  3.

  Wilfred Owen’s hunched

  Over his shovel,

  Muttering about

  Corpse-stench, mustard gas.

  And no matter how loud

  I shout, he won’t look up.

  His ears are ruptured;

  His brain, concussed

  From gigantic artillery

  Explosions.

  He’s dug

  Enough trenches

  To fill the entire

  Twentieth century,

  Yet no line is deep enough

  To save a single one of us.

  4.

  The mind “has cliffs” that are

  “Sheer, no-man-fathomed,”

  And Gerard Hopkins clung

  To more than one.

  He knew

  How vast and frightening

  It can be inside

  And never denied

  His own brain was mostly

  A landscape of chasms.

  He descended, again

  And again, clutching

  Notebook and pen,

  To the bottom

  Of the deepest and darkest.

  5.

  Rimbaud, crashing

  Through danger

  And degradation—

  Convinced

  That on the other side

  Resplendent wonder

  Must abide.

  What courage

  It took—his poems

  Spitting off sparks

  As they raced through the dark.

  6.

  When Karl Marx was beardless

  And young, he wanted most

  To be a poet.

  He gave it

  A shot, but it didn’t click

  And soon he switched

  To other things for which

  He became rightly famous,

  For instance: the claim

  That all labor ought to be sacred.

  7.

  I believe in nothing but the holiness of the heart’s

  affections and the truth of imagination.

  KEATS

  I know it never

  Happened:

  She’s asleep

  Now in the small room

  They share.

  Keats

  Is still awake

  At his desk,

  Feverishly

  Trying to translate

  Her body into words—

  Those ripening breasts—

  “Their soft fall and swell.”

  He pauses, puts hand

  To chin and stares

  Off into space—

  A pose

  He’s perfected

  For working on poems.

  After a bit, he’s restless

  And stands up

  To cross the room,

  Lean down and,


  With his lips,

  Closely follow the original text.

  8. The Lake Poets

  Somber Wordsworth

  Paced his closed-in garden

  To the regular, iambic meters

  He composed as he strolled;

  How the wilder Coleridge,

  When they went for walks,

  Kept veering off the path

  To scramble up steep

  Slopes on hands and knees,

  With urgent,

  Spasmodic gestures—

  Rhythms of his own poems.

  9.

  Wordsworth felt “the burden

  Of this unintelligible world.”

  Luckily, we don’t bear it alone—

  The beloved’s eager to help.

  Didn’t she carry it in poems, whole

  Centuries before we were born?

  Won’t he be lugging it in songs,

  Long after we’re gone?

  10. For Hölderlin

  Who’d want to be

  That plaster statue

  Of the god Calm

  Around whom

  Chaos

  Swirls and swarms?

  Better to swim

  Through harm

  Than ride

  So high above it

  That we look

  Down on suffering.

  You must descend,

  Love said,

  You must embrace

  What seeks to break you.

  11.

  “Chaos shimmering through a veil

  Of order”—Novalis

  Trying to define art,

  But instead describing

  The beloved, how her

  Curves press against

  Confining garments.

  Always, Eros at the heart

  Of it—the beloved

  Bending over us,

  His breath troubling

  Our surface to get at our depths.

  12.

  Shakespeare noted: poets

  Have a lot in common

  With lunatics

  And besotted lovers—

  Except the poet’s eyes

  Are free to rove

  “In a fine frenzy

  Rolling,” and so they

  Take in both heaven

  And earth (and add

  “hell” as well)—

  Take in all three realms,

  And also

  That wild one inside us.

  Not to mention what’s going on

  In the beloved’s head

  And heart—that double

  Mystery no one’s ever

  Solved.

  How to untangle

  It all and make it plain?

  “Grab your pen,” was

  The Bard’s advice.

  His command?

  “Write like crazy!

  It’s your only chance to stay sane.”

  13.

  Clutching a bottle of wine,

  Petrarch follows his shepherd

  Guide. They’re trudging up

  The steep slopes of Mount

  Ventoux.

  What he’s up

  To is pretty much without

  Precedent (at least

  In the West):

  Climbing

  A mountain

  Just for the fuck of it.

  True, he’s also one more

  Trapped poet

  Of the Middle Ages

  Searching for some way out

  That doesn’t lead to God.

  Now, he’s reached the top

  And suddenly gets it:

  This huge vista his eyes

  Are taking in—it

  Mirrors the world inside.

  Uncorking the bottle, he

  Gazes south, frightened

  But brave.

  Biting

  His lip hard, he tastes the sea.

  14.

  “The tears of things”—

  Virgil’s phrase;

  As if every object

  Is filled

  With grief

  And wants to weep.

  When that dark mood

  Weighs me down,

  I feel the urge to cut

  Each bright thread

  That binds me to this world.

  My body’s a sad thing

  I’d gladly leave behind—

  Something I could

  Step out of,

  A long

  Bandage I would unwind.

  15.

  “The whole country torn

  By war. Only mountains

  And rivers remain.”

  Du Fu’s poem outlived

  The strife it was born from.

  History imposes its grim

  Conditions: always,

  The beloved is dying;

  Always, rampant violence.

  Always, the soul resists;

  Someone somewhere

  Is writing a poem,

  And someone else waiting

  (sometimes for centuries)

  To read it—someone

  Who needs it

  So as not to yield to despair.

  16. To Heraclitus

  You taught the world’s

  Unstable—

  Not even

  Atoms are tame.

  You showed

  Change

  Is the name

  Of the game,

  And even the game

  Can change.

  You never said strife

  Was nice; only

  That we need fire

  As much as ice—

  That energy

  Must flow:

  A structure

  That’s closed

  Will only explode.

  17.

  Praxilla’s single poem—

  That made her

  A fifth-century BC

  One-hit wonder.

  It briefly

  Topped the charts:

  Lament from that bleak

  And cheerless Afterworld,

  Which was the best

  Greeks could imagine,

  Even for their greatest heroes.

  Those four lines—nothing

  But a little list of things

  Adonis missed most:

  Stars and moon and sun

  And the taste of ripe cucumbers.

  Ode to Words

  They cluster

  At tongue-tip,

  The points of pens.

  Shaping them

  Into word-ships—

  That’s my

  Form of worship:

  Riding the wild

  River of this world.

  *

  The Bible says

  Adam brought

  Trouble

  Into the world

  With his small

  Pink slab of muscle.

  But if God didn’t

  Want it to happen,

  Why did He

  Give him a tongue?

  *

  “God so loved the word

  He gave His only

  Begotten world

  That it might be

  Redeemed.”

  I think the preacher

  Used to say that

  In my church

  When I was a kid.

  Then again, I could

  Have gotten it wrong—

  Back then

  I wasn’t really listening.

  *

  “And the word

  Was made

  Fresh”—

  Each one

  Baked daily.

  It’s the bread

  By which I live.

  *

  Talk about miracles!

  How I take empty air

  Deep in my lungs,

  Warming it there,

  Extracting from it

  What my blood needs,

  Then breathing it back

  Out as sound

  I’ve added meani
ng to.

  *

  Outside our bodies, things

  Wait to be named,

  To be saved.

  And don’t they deserve it?

  So much hidden inside

  Each one,

  Such a longing

  To become the beloved.

  Meanwhile, the sounds

  Crowd our mouths,

  Press up against

  Our lips

  Which

  Are such

  A narrow exit

  For a joy so desperate.

  *

  Vowels that rise

  From our open throats . . .

  Long “a” lounging, naked

  In the leafy shade;

  Then the low,

  Lubricious moan of “o.”

  The high “e” of grief.

  And “u”—who

  Could ever forget you?

  “I” could never.

  “Y” would I even try?

  *

  The word “mockingbird”—

  It’s poised in my mouth

  Same as the bird itself

  Pauses on the dogwood branch.

  When the bird flies away,

  The word remains.

  Look, now it’s right here—

  Singing on the page.

  *

  The word is exempt from

 

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