For Michael Ventura
It must have been Saturn and the other old men
Who arranged this night of darkness for us.
So much of our life goes by in the murky dark.
When you open an apple in order to take in
Its sweet fruit, be sure to eat the tiny black seeds
So you can taste the tartness that Swift knew.
I’m never tired of despair and desperation,
And I won’t be quiet. I keep crying out that the house
Is being robbed. I want even the thieves to know.
We’ll have to help each other to hear, because
It was in the middle of the night during a storm
That Sophocles and all the weepers were born.
We’ve tried to go straight for a hundred years
With the help of reason. Friends, we are tufted
Nuthatches blown for miles in the dawn wind.
I don’t know why these poems keep veering off
Toward darkness. Robert, you are actually a daughter
Of Lot, fleeing from the ruins of the Enlightenment.
Leave a Reply