The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write

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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.
r />   An old man with a full

  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

 

 

 


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