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The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write

Page 3

by Gregory Orr


  The world’s flaws—

  “Leaf” is complete,

  Unscarred by insect

  Or wind-tossed twig,

  Yet it is an essence

  That implicates the world

  As a wound implies a body.

  *

  When I was young

  I was always eager

  To learn new words.

  How many there were!

  Now, I’m old and still

  Learn new ones,

  But forget more and more

  Of those I once knew.

  When I was young

  I couldn’t have imagined

  The time would come

  When I’d need so few.

  *

  I always supposed

  It was words

  I was after—

  Those

  Shining fish

  The poem’s net gets.

  But who knows?

  Maybe it was

  The sea

  Itself,

  I was trying

  To haul on deck.

  Song of Lyric Geography

  It consists of cliffs and plateaus—

  The lyric life I chose.

  In the worst phase, I know

  Each desperate word

  Is only a handhold

  And there’s a sheer fall below.

  In the other, the pressure’s

  Suddenly gone,

  And I stroll along

  As calm phrases unfold;

  Soon, I’ve become deluded—

  My guard’s down

  And I’m convinced

  It will always be like this:

  A steady catalogue

  Of my hard-earned bliss.

  That’s when it opens

  Beneath my feet—recurrent abyss.

  You sat alone in a room . . .

  You sat alone in a room,

  Listening to the harsh

  Chorus

  Of accusing voices.

  Waiting for the worst

  To pass, waiting for

  The meanest to cease.

  Hoping the beloved

  Was somewhere

  Among them;

  Hoping—when

  The malicious

  Hubbub was over—

  You’d hear one word of love.

  There are questions . . .

  There are questions

  That must be asked,

  But no one alive

  Can answer,

  And yours is one of them:

  Where was the beloved

  Then,

  You want to know?

  When, in the dark

  Orchard, he hurt you.

  When you curled up

  In the tiniest ball

  A child’s body can be,

  And still the blows fell?

  The Undertoad

  Something in words that’s perverse,

  That wants to be beyond

  What we understand and control—

  Something above or below.

  “Watch out for the undertoad,”

  Was what she heard her father

  Shout above the waves—

  That a word misheard could create

  Such a creature

  And feed her childhood fears.

  Or how I mistyped “undertow”

  As “undertown”

  And found myself inhabiting

  A city beneath the sea

  Where everything moved slowly

  And breathed chains of bubbles

  That rose toward the upper world,

  A tethering of pearls.

  Trying hard just to listen . . .

  Trying hard just to listen

  And let the story enter,

  Though I’m tempted

  To turn away,

  Or to use my own words

  To put a wall between us.

  Eager to reassure quickly,

  As if compassion

  Could save me

  From my own fear.

  How my ears burn

  With the blush

  Of what she confesses,

  Or go cold and bloodless

  As he tells of all he endured.

  Aftermath Sonnet

  Letting my tongue sleep,

  And my heart go numb.

  Sensing that speech

  Too soon,

  After such a wound,

  Would only be

  A different bleeding.

  Even needing to leave

  The page blank.

  Long season

  Of silence—

  Trusting that under

  Its bandage of snow,

  The field of me is healing.

  How often I’ve wished . . .

  How often I’ve wished

  It arrived by just

  Sashaying in

  Through my senses.

  But for me, love

  Couldn’t enter

  Until I was broken,

  All the way to the center.

  Right here, the blow fell—

  A sledgehammer

  Against a wall.

  And so,

  A ragged door was made,

  And the beloved came to dwell.

  It’s narrow . . .

  It’s narrow, and no room

  For error—I zig

  And zag through

  The treacherous channel.

  What fool said joy

  Is less risky than grief?

  My ship could wreck

  On either shore.

  Needing to navigate

  By contradiction:

  What I want to grip,

  I need to release.

  When despair says

  “Let go,” I must hold.

  Aftermath Inventory

  Shattered? Of course,

  That matters.

  But

  What comes next

  Is all

  I can hope to master.

  Knowing, deep in my

  Bones,

  Not all hurt harms.

  My wounds?

  If,

  Somehow, I

  Grow through them,

  Aren’t they also a boon?

  My scars?

  Someday,

  They might shine

  Brighter than stars.

  For Trisha

  1.

  They were your anchors—

  Your parents.

  Without them,

  What can the boat do

  But respond

  To tides and currents?

  In time, you’ll hoist sail;

  Rudder and keel intact.

  You can navigate—

  There are islands to find.

  But when you get there—

  There being anywhere—

  What will hold you?

  What will keep you from drifting?

  2.

  Grieving over something

  You never even knew

  You loved: that gloomy

  House of your childhood

  Where you were mostly

  Miserable.

  Sold now,

  And tomorrow a stranger

  Will begin to live there.

  Lighter and lighter as we grow

  Older—stuff lost, or cast off.

  3.

  We’re so near, but because of that,

  Sometimes we need to shout.

  We call it “clearing the air.”

  We’re allowed to say mean things

  As long as they’re true, or seem so

  In that moment.

  Also, they must be

  Evenly matched—tit for tat.

  And later, we have to take it all back.

  We don’t do this for fun. We do it

  When one of us knows her heart’s

  In the right place, but no longer beating;

  Or one of us notices his lungs are ok,

  But he’s no
longer breathing.

  4. Prayer/Plea

  Come now, come soon, I summon you

  Who, alone, can burst this husk

  Of numb that I’ve become.

  And bring your jumper cables,

  Your battery juiced with blue fire—

  I need its zap.

  I need you

  And your voodoo lute. I need

  One more of your rescues

  Innumerable.

  Heed this, my howled plea

  That’s half-past last gasp:

  I need you to

  Horizon-happen, bringing the usual.

  We were that joke . . .

  We were that joke, a couple joined at the hip—

  But such an oddity had its own appeal.

  For us—the wounds kissed long before the lips.

  Easy enough to get past the nasty quips:

  How codependent we were; how unreal

  And comically odd—a couple joined at the hip.

  The risk of this: we’re a single nerve from toe to tip—

  When one is hurt, the other’s bound to squeal.

  The fate of those whose wounds kiss long before their lips.

  The upside? Our lives are braided: two strips

  Of soul-stuff wound together so we feel

  That when our bodies couple at the hip

  It’s what the gods intended: a joy that rips

  The heart out and serves it as a meal.

  When your wounds have kissed long before your lips

  Love will always be the bittersweet of whips—

  The hurt will deepen long before it heals.

  You learn such things when you’re joined at the hip

  And your wounds have kissed long before your lips.

  Ode to the Country of Us

  We made it up

  Out of two pronouns:

  “I” and “you.”

  We called it

  The country of Us.

  *

  That first, exploratory meeting

  Full of mutual suspicions—

  How could they be

  Overcome?

  In the beginning

  It wasn’t even certain

  We spoke the same tongue.

  At best, they were wildly

  Divergent dialects.

  A dictionary?

  Years

  In the making.

  Key terms—

  Still in dispute to this day.

  *

  From the outset,

  It was hard for

  Us

  To see eye to eye.

  For my part, I was

  Distracted

  By the rest of you.

  *

  If we were two ships

  We could have passed

  In the ocean and not

  Known.

  If we were

  Two birds we might

  Have been flying

  To opposite sides

  Of the sky.

  But

  We were two bodies

  Who bumped

  Into each other

  And clung.

  Two

  Bodies that collided,

  Then steadied each other,

  Then stayed.

  *

  Shortly after we met,

  We held a contest

  To design a flag.

  I wanted a small

  Yin-yang

  Superimposed

  On a labyrinth.

  You favored a single

  Rose,

  Rising from a single vase.

  We settled on something

  Totally white—

  It had nothing

  To do with purity,

  Nor with surrender.

  Think of a blank page

  On which experience

  Will write lines

  Indelible as those

  That mark a face.

  Think of a bed

  With covers thrown back,

  And the sheet beneath

  Ready for the wars of love.

  *

  Our currency

  Is touch.

  A Kiss the single

  Largest

  Denomination.

  Followed by

  A Caress:

  An open hand

  Sliding down

  An arm or

  Squeezing a thigh.

  Small change

  The fingertips give.

  *

  No wonder it’s unstable:

  The national anthem

  Never the same

  For two consecutive days:

  Whatever love song

  The jukebox plays.

  *

  The stamps are also

  Ridiculous.

  Only two kinds:

  If you’re feeling

  Friendly

  You lather

  Your lips thickly

  With something

  Red and smooch

  The right-hand

  Corner

  Of the envelope.

  If you’re pissed

  At the intended

  Recipient,

  You ink your thumb

  And push down

  Hard,

  As if crushing an insect.

  *

  Who could possibly predict

  The future of a country

  As small as

  Us?

  What are

  Its prospects?

  No army to speak of.

  Some think

  Its natural resources

  All but exhausted.

  Optimists insist

  It will last our lifetime.

  We can only hope.

  *

  Seeking the most

  Accurate account?

  You won’t find it

  In history books—

  They get the facts,

  But they don’t

  Get the mystery.

  Poems and songs?

  Saturated with lies;

  Closest

  You’ll come to the truth.

  *

  Nostalgia: a national

  Pastime—

  Whole days spent

  Conjuring up

  A lost

  Golden moment,

  Or lavishing

  A nacreous beauty

  Around a grit of fact.

  *

  Thrive though it might, its days

  Are necessarily numbered.

  You don’t need to see

  A crack in the wall,

  To know mortality calls.

  Who’ll be the one to leave?

  Who, the one to grieve?

  *

  Briefest of nations—

  Blip

  On history’s screen.

  Leaving not even

  A trace

  Of its existence.

  To the world

  It was

  Less than nothing.

  To us: it was all.

  Sitting at a dinner table . . .

  Sitting at a dinner table

  With seven old people,

  The youngest among us

  In her mid-sixties.

  Eating and drinking

  And talking along;

  The men dominant

  And pompous

  And name-dropping

  As each in turn

  Mounts his hobbyhorse

  And gives a little lecture

  (myself included).

  And the topic of written

  Words comes up

  And one of the women

  Wisely observes

  That the tablets of Moses

  Gave the Jews of Genesis

  A way to behave—

  Got them back on a path

  To basic decency

  If not to a promised land.

  And I respect that: writing

  Out a few, clear-cut

  Prohibition
s wasn’t

  A bad idea;

  And when you toss in

  A little Sumerian

  Eye-for-an-eye

  And tooth-for-a-tooth,

  You’ve got a rough version

  Of justice, as well as some

  Good rules.

  And so,

  We Western humans began

  Our stumble through history,

  Our endless and uncertain

  Struggle against the worst

  In us and the worst

  Among us—those

  Who delight in power

  And, in turn, recruit

  Those who take

  Pleasure in harming others.

  By now, the wine’s not

  Working anymore

  And I’m silently reflecting

  On how I’ve lived through

  The end of one century

  Into the next, and still

  It’s a dark and violent world.

  The Ferris Wheel at the World’s Fair

  The wheel swoops you up, swoops you down again.

 

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