A number of years ago I prepared to leave the country for the first time. Later, I prepared again… and again. Each time I departed the shell was thinner; and each time I returned, the distance between those I loved at home and those I loved abroad was shorter. I held and was held by wonderful people of all races and all religions and all economic levels — those who were easiest to love often possessed (or were possessed by) the least material wealth.

Spin the world forward in its orbit several times: I find myself member of a Formalist poetry group in Massachusetts. I love forms, and enjoy the structure of thought and the music of language that our long heritage of English Language poets has produced. While the spark of inspiration burns up through the body, as it does in all of the arts, a plume of fire from some deep center-of-the-earth rift, Formalism filters that raw material through several layers of Reason, takes most of the grit away, sands down the rough edges, and polishes anything that might have been mud-colored or blood-colored to a mirror-like surface… one in which you could imagine you see yourself, were the reflection similar to your self-conception.

Since to greater or lesser degree (depending on the prowess of the poet) that artisanry takes place in the mind — perhaps less so as interpersonal issues  usurp religious or philosophical ones, alas — what you see in that mirror may be Mind more than the sway of your hips (should they sway) or the burning of your heart (should it burn).

The poem below doesn’t offer much to the Formalists. It says, “I would prefer, for the next few minutes, that you relax…” At the reading where I presented this, I hadn’t properly addressed the crowd, hadn’t asked them to take a deep breath, to close their eyes. I hadn’t said: listen to the sounds and allow the words themselves to find one another — in the same nuanced, connotative, magical way that people find one another — instead of trying to brain your way through this. Your body might love it, your brain (if it is clenched) will be upset.

So I had a few people upset with me. I suppose that the poem could be, as they said, narcissistic. And I could be as well. Though I would argue that folks who dip down into whatever creative pool nourishes their work, allowing that water to pour through their hands, might not be self-involved so much as servants at the well. Simple waterboys and watergirls doing what they do, over and over again: if you wish to drink, there it is. That’s not so deviant, is it?

And, if I were to get into an argument about the qualities of self-love, and blindness to others, I guess I would have to claim that rigid spirit and rigid intellect, unable to see the music in everything because they are squinting too hard, may well be more susceptible to narcissism than a mongrel heart that likes to graze.

So here is a poem about love. It is an ecstatic poem, which means the emotions come up and pour out pretty much uncooked. If you are inclined to enjoy jungle wandering, please please dive in. Go slow. Read out loud (so many people read with their mind, instead of with their bodies — sound is song, and needs lips and bellies and breath to bring the notes to life), and allow the multitude of meanings string together a pattern which isn’t obvious, on a fabric that is probably invisible.

Declaração de amor

There are borders seen and borders out of sight
yet I know the world connected below the waters
is round as the marker in my unfurling fist
the coin of departure which disavows our strangeness
and my tongue would drink from another spring
loose a music my mother would not understand
but dance to nonetheless to see it soften me
taste the wisdom of unclarity, taste the salt and wine
that floods the fences between your land and mine

if all the water in me were dried
and poured out like sand upon the street
if I were to walk barefoot in this, my life
and answer yes to all questions posed
whatever was asked, the fortune of me generous
for the sudden birth of a sun thought lost
if a gust should lift that dry life overhead
the day could light it, like a paper lantern
and bear it shining above the road
that carries us from one day to the next

where hovering on wings gilded by that daybreak
dipped from the diamond-laced waters of last night
our bodies drive until we decide no longer
are traces turned away in search of wonder
and names are flowers which bloom and seed and blow away
to feed another season of the field which leaps up a painted green ovation
whose applause is all for the new-born sun
and all for us, I would also say

such praise I had not heard before
carried by the wind from parting lips
so swiftly only a kiss could hear:
the fruit of some tree of the tongue
which never mastered common cadence speech
though it could taste no sweeter
and spills desire in rills of sugar
that close our eyes and make the body shiver
and remember there is no land beyond our travel

this language is outside the cube of space
depends upon no instrument to carry it
deep into the quarry of the blood
but through a touch or thought of touch
or rising through each limb and breath
until the slightest gesture, the smallest step
shouts everything I am
and all of you

we may go where we shall go
there is no channel unripe for words
but a thousand ears which will not lose our meaning
and flocks whose wings will fly behind
our most delicate and thundering progress
chasing this spring dance of our entwined agility.

“Saint Spring“, by Anmoku @ DeviantArt.com

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