Friday, April 3, 2009

Poetry Month - D. A. Powell

corydon & alexis, redux
by D. A. Powell

and yet we think that song outlasts us all: wrecked devotion
the wept face of desire, a kind of savage caring that reseeds itself
and grows in clusters

oh, you who are young, consider how quickly the body deranges itself
how time, the cruel banker, forecloses us to snowdrifts white as
god's own ribs



what else but to linger in the slight shade of those sapling branches
yearning for that vernal beau. for don't birds covet the seeds of
the honey locust
and doesn't the ewe have a nose for wet filaree and slender oats
foraged in the meadow
kit foxes crave the blacktailed hare: how this longing grabs me by
the nape



guess I figured to be done with desire, if I could write it out
dispense with any evidence, the way one burns a pile of twigs
and brush

what was his name? I'd ask myself, that guy with the sideburns
and charming smile
the one I hoped that, as from a sip of hemlock, I'd expire with him
on my tongue



silly poet, silly man: thought I could master nature like a misguided
preacher
as if banishing love is a fix. as if the stars go out when we shut our
sleepy eyes



~ From the Academy of American Poets


No comments: