by Gregory Orr
And I was too young
To realize the handle
Was biased
For a right-hand child,
So all I could do
Was cut in clumsy zigzags
And feel like a fool.
Staring hard at the blades,
I tried to will them
To obey,
Who couldn’t conceive
I was being freed
That day
By those little silver wings
Of a bird
Intent on the erratic,
Authentic pattern
Of its own flight
Through a sky of colored paper.
Certain poems offer me . . .
Certain poems offer me escape—
They’re floating islands
Anchored only
By a cloud-rope of words
I can climb.
Some
Are the opposite:
Insisting on
Embodiment—
As if they were tattooed
On the beloved’s thigh.
Still others are short
And sharp—arrows
Aimed at the heart,
As if the purpose
Of beauty
Was to hurt me more alive.
For weeks now . . .
For weeks now, I’ve been
Lost in the maze
Of spring’s profusions;
Lazily wandering
Around, neglecting
So much,
Ignoring my garden.
Heeding instead
The willow’s green
Singing—
Imagining it was
The beloved.
Listening to the frogs’
Chorus and
Thinking so, also.
And now a pair
Of wrens
Has given me
A comeuppance:
They’ve built their nest
In my weeding basket
That hangs
From a hook in the open shed—
Three round, pale eggs!
Still Life
For Trisha
The purpose, of course, is to hold life still,
To turn the fleeting shadow into shade,
Though such a purpose is against life’s will.
Lace and quilts and flowers like a bird’s quills—
Praising what you’ve rescued from time’s blade
Is the purpose, of course. But to hold life still
Can itself raise strange questions: Does it kill
Them differently to have their deaths delayed?
It’s clear our purpose is against life’s will:
Life prefers the running water to the still;
In its world, tulips only bloom to fade.
Our purpose, though, is to hold life still
So the harried gazer can gaze her fill
At this rich jumble purposefully arrayed,
Though such a purpose is against life’s will.
What it means is this: vital moments that spill
Into that quiet space a painting’s made.
The purpose, of course, is to hold life still
Though such a purpose is against life’s will.
For My Daughters
Fearing for them, I
Clustered them together,
Then cut them off
From others—
Cloistered them
As if they were nuns.
As if they could only
Stand a little suffering
And needed shielding.
Maybe the opposite’s
True—they long to be
Tested.
Maybe
Something inside them
Prowls the space I made,
Eager to leap forth
When hurt at last
Smashes open their cage.
For My Mother
Driving at night over the back
Roads, you used
To sing old songs.
My favorite was
“Down in the Valley”—
Melancholy tune
Whose refrain went:
“Angels in heaven
Know I love you.”
You were soon
To die and me
Still a child, sitting so
Close beside you,
Yet mishearing
That line as if it
Paused in the middle
While the singer
Considered
A celestial offer
And then declined:
As if it meant
“Angels in heaven?
No, I love you.”
Such a choice
Impressed me,
And even then made sense.
The last love poem I will ever write . . .
Will contain an invention for turning ants’ tears
Into hummingbird wings. It will hold every
Elegy the night sky ever wrote for the moon.
It will reveal the answer to the question “Yes.”
It will feature a rosebush that grew naturally
Into the shape of a woman, a man, and a dog.
It will contain all our sorrow and some of our joy.
It will exhibit glass slippers worn by the last queen of mice
And also the invisible cathedral built on the spot where we met.
It will display a tree whose leaves change color
With the weather, turning bright blue at forty degrees.
It will contain a replica of the ice ship that sails
Through dreams, searching for survivors.
It will contain all our joy and most of our sorrow.
Young, I took it all so . . .
Young, I took it all so
Personally
When things vanished.
There’s a word for that:
Inconsolable.
You’d think, as I
Grew older,
I’d have adjusted
To the simple fact
That everything’s
Borne away
On a ceaseless flood.
But then, I’d never have
Become
A lyric poet—
Someone with a grudge
Against the world,
Against the world he loves.
Secret Constellation
From start to finish
It must have been
There.
How else
Could I have begun
As a kid
Bent
Over a desk,
Trying to guess
What shape
My pencil
Would make
When at last
It connected up
That cloud
Of numbered dots,
And ended up
Here:
An old man,
Happily
Staring into
An inner dark
Strewn
With words
Like random stars?
Some luminous
Pattern
Must have
Ruled my days.
From start
To finish,
It must have been there.
Inscription
All this winter afternoon spent
Reading about ancient
Greek lyric and the invention
Of the simple alphabet—
How those small marks
On papyrus changed
Everything; persuaded
Lyric poets they could
Become immortal.
“Someone
Will remember us,”
Wrote Sappho, naming
Herself and those she loved
In poems that are only
Fragments now,
And a single one that’s whole:
A prayer to Aphrodite.
Bladder, I pause
To step out back
Where yesterday’s flurries
Have made the lawn
Into a blank page
In a small corner of which
I piss out the hot stream
Of my own being,
Grateful to be part of that
Holy and hopeless story
By which poets send past death
Their praise of life
And write
Their names on the vanishing page.
It’s time . . .
It’s time to turn the TV off
And listen.
That noise?
What is it?
Maybe it’s only crickets.
Maybe it’s distant music.
Maybe people
Are dancing somewhere
Not far from here,
The beloved among them.
Out into the street—
We need to investigate,
To find out what’s there.
Even if it’s only crickets.
Acknowledgments
Some of these poems, some in earlier or different forms, have appeared in the following magazines:
American Poetry Review: “Ode to Some Lyric Poets,” “Lines Standing in for Religious Conviction,” “Dark Song,” “And So,” “Ode to Words.”
Mississippi Review: “Dark Proverbs for Dark Times” appeared originally as “Three Dark Proverb Sonnets” and was subsequently chosen by Natasha Tretheway to appear in Best American Poetry 2017 (Scribner’s).
Narrative: “Ode to Nothing,” “The Ferris Wheel at the World’s Fair,” “Dark Proverbs for Dark Times,” “I Don’t Really Care, Do You?,” “Charlottesville Elegy,” “Hector Bidding Wife and Child a Last Good-bye,” “Downtown Tour,” “Lyric Revises the World,” “Ode to These Socks.”
Plume: “Sitting at a dinner table . . . ,” “Song of What Happens,” “The Ferris Wheel at the World’s Fair.”
Smartish Pace: “For Trisha,” “Ode to the Country of Us,” “It’s time . . .”
Well Review (Ireland): “How often I’ve wished . . .” and “Song of Aftermath.”
My gratitude to the editors for their hospitality.
ALSO BY GREGORY ORR
Poetry
River Inside the River
Burning the Empty Nests
Gathering the Bones Together
The Red House
We Must Make a Kingdom of It
New and Selected Poems
City of Salt
Orpheus & Eurydice
The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems
Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved
How Beautiful the Beloved
Prose
A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry
Poetry as Survival
The Blessing: A Memoir
Stanley Kunitz: An Introduction to the Poetry
Richer Entanglements: Essays and Notes on Poetry and Poems
Copyright © 2019 by Gregory Orr
All rights reserved
First Edition
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at [email protected] or 800-233-4830
Book design by JAM Design
Production manager: Lauren Abbate
Jacket Design by Jared Oriel
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Orr, Gregory, author.
Title: The last love poem I will ever write : poems / Gregory Orr.
Description: New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018059611 | ISBN 9781324002352 (hardcover)
Classification: LCC PS3565.R7 A6 2019 | DDC 811/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059611
ISBN 9781324002369 (ebook)
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS