I Wanted to Write a Poem

I Wanted to Write a Poem

1.

Think of the poem as a museum of loneliness—don’t imagine it’s a glass room built near the house—a charming place where the old Italians grew lemons in winter. Poems are stricter than that; darker; always more isolated…

2.

The Book of Common Prayer lay beside a window. (This was the customary volume at the Royal Hospital for Incurables.) The book lay open at Psalm 23. No one has ever lived without poetry. Why keep it from the exhibit? Now it’s just as it was.

3.

They used to hang the bread from rafters. They had lullabies you wouldn’t sing to children nowadays.

& their offspring thought nothing of carrying a broken angel across the fields…

4.

Guardian moon: Lutheran Sun—Pentecost and ice breaking in the harbor. Words conspire with and without us. Let’s take a long voyage.

S.K.