Edensong
Wanting song
in the beginning
beginning to end
now we are falling
through what’s to come
needing Eden
now we are drifting
Eden undone
as if from the ends
of earth hearing
Eden’s calling
to tend and attend
now we are sprawling
through what we’ve done
through what we’re losing
as what we’ve won
as we are falling
as Eden is calling
earth and heaven
wanting song
* * * * *
Can You Hear Me?
Can you hear me?
There at the back,
yes? Testing
1, 2, 3 … ?
This is working?
Great. Everything’s
working? Great?
Just checking —
you never know
what exactly’s
getting through,
do you? It’s
a little like the
day, years ago,
I was on
a radio show —
Sound Check,
that was its name,
though at the time
I didn’t know
what it was called,
so, when
I was sent
into the studio
and the host looked
up and said —
“Just follow my lead …
This is Sound Check …”
I kept staring
lightly terrified
into his eyes
trying to hear
if we were live
or only rehearsing,
which is, in its way,
always the question.
* * * * *
What the Beard Said, III
is, just now, beyond me
softly — as a kind of mercy? —
here within the fat
book’s saying that
to ascend’s in fact
to sink into the heart of
what’s on high beginning
with what’s right in front
of our eyes and ears above
all else or else beneath
them when they’re close
to being closed to dying
to the world we go
now now it isn’t so
hard to imagine something
coming from nothing and not
for nothing as they say it
might just be your lucky day
or maybe someone else’s nothing
come to something or
something to naught is what I
thought I heard there in what the
beard (softly) seemed to be saying
/ / / / /
The poems above are excerpted from Draw Me After, poems by Peter Cole. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on November 22, 2022. Copyright © 2022 by Peter Cole. All rights reserved. To obtain a copy of the collection from Bookshop.org, click here …