It is impossible.
The soul doesn’t recover
from one poem to the next.
Its wound just keeps getting wider,
until a river flows between its parts.
A clean cascade of colorless blood,
an artesian purity, because,
the deep wounds of the heart,
the soaring arias,
the dances and waltzes
have gone away.
Only so many real things happen,
and opening the gates,
they fled like birds,
like tigers,
like lizards that needed new marsh,
so in the end nothing is left,
but trickles of nothing.
The blood has turned to water,
the words to rumor,
to adieus about rising and going to bed,
with nothing that happened,
except growing older.
I am running out of days.
The war has passed on.
The love in my eyes
has no look of return,
everything’s routine.
So I’m going to throw a soiree,
a party,
invite everyone to come.
Ask all the things that ran away
to return,
and then take each poem
and burn it on a pyre,
a dozen at a time,
a basket,
bags,
until there is nothing left but ashes.
And invite everyone to have a bag of ashes,
to throw them on their sidewalks,
on their gardens,
into the air
to see a cloud of soot,
and know,
that is my life.
Every tear that I ever shed,
every truth I ever knew,
all my ridiculous pretenses
genuine as they were,
thrown to the wind,
and after the party everyone can stay,
and I will go away.
Nothing in my hands,
an empty heart,
a soul looking into a mirror
and seeing nothing,
until tomorrow when I return,
sit down,
and write a poem all over again.