Fourfold Amen
Onstage, it takes the lead
a lot of words to die. Maybe
I, too, am holding a red scarf
to a false wound.
. . .
This morning someone
published a how-to titled
Telling Your Kids
It’s the End of the World.
Maybe there’s been a run
on red scarves that pool,
silken, sanguine,
in actors’ laps. Either that
or button tips no longer
come with épées.
. . .
I am not ungrateful
for the last lecture, for letters
labeled in the event of,
for the lawyers
who write up our wills;
every lullay I’ve sung —
I’ve meant it.
. . .
But I would rather go out
stringing a hymn along,
singing to delay the end
of men, rolling the first letter
up the octaves again
and again.
I would rather be the sort
who cannot help
but run back and duck
her head inside
a rolled-down window
for another kiss
before life pulls away.
* * * * *
Aubade Minus Sunup
I’m not talking about dawn delayed
by blackout drapes or levees of cloud
too thick to be backlit. I’m talking
about the spell one sings when night
is an overturned bowl that takes weeks
to jimmy off the turf.
. . .
So far this form —
aubade minus sunup — belongs only
to the poles. So does duskless nocturne:
in January, in July, antipodal poets
make odes on frozen roosters
and sunstruck nightingales.
Probably
we should fret, too, the unrelenting light,
but suns don’t storm cellars, whereas
the dark loves a grave the same as it loves
sky, and to Everreadys’ fire there always is
an end. So we crack dawn. We pull apart
and yawn the nocturne’s antiphon.
We break the daybreak verse.