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 57.
You see, the ache does not vanish with a day
Or weather clearing, or news from the front
Or new books or opinions sliced
Like onions in the stalls.
No, it sits unbeckoned,
That harmony some skillful hand
Underlined in brass, then low strings
That sits there on the bottom
As cunning as unbidden noise,
Ambient itch, decked out as trickery,
Making the body sick and love its sickness,
Forgetting, as in a Perrault tale, what real happiness
What true love is.
And are such words worth the effort to discuss? Deep
As weeds submerged
They sway with every knee of the current,
These aches, how they cast strong roots,
How they knit onto stones,
How they flood the mind with weedy confidence
That the push of want is common;
That the pin dabs of fire are ice,
That this was meant to be.
58. I am resigned to never have that side
Of the mirror, the costly side, where the doors
Are narrow and may not let one back in:
Lobstertraps beyond: firm desires
Mean dilligent selection.
What price and what currency
And how to pay, and what
Sound rings on in the till? The thud
Of gold, the thud of flesh,
Confused sounds layered and poorly mixed.
This is the price of living, never mind
The long dying, the fields of furrows
When the shoots are inching up.
The price of living is all too dear.
Its rates are limed and streaked with weak ink
In the foolish syllabary of time.
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