Poetry! Tell us what the famous poet told you!
He told me he loved her as a poet,
That he knew no other way.
He sacrificed his language,
And all common affections, to poetry,
But he was stricken with the knowledge
Poetry was false; it resembled a play,
But a play without a stage, or beauty.
How can dumb illusion make reality stay?
Illusion becomes its own end;
Gaining poetry, we lose the human friend.
We are many things, he said; even poetry,
To a devotee like myself, only a part
Of life; I knew her above and beneath the art.
The art, the act, the expertise, the gestures,
Fuses in opposition to what belittles us,
And accuses us, and ages us, with its stain—
But we oppose it all in vain.
In love, we confuse solemnity
Of thought with sweetly sensual Aphrodite.
Sacred love mocks our appetites.
When we drink with Israelites,
Suspicion raises the glasses high.
After gaudy, intellectual nights,
We stumble on our positions and die.
Love turns to lust in the public square.
All is bad—everything we thought was fair.
Our passion crawls into passion’s bowl—
A bowl spilled, easily, by a spiteful or a careless hand.
Poetry cannot cure the fatal day—
No matter what we say—
Hovering over us. Death owns the wedding band.
Poetry could not assist
What we misunderstood, or, kissed.
There was nothing poetry could do.
(I’m not sure he wanted me to share this point with you.)
He hated the poetry which attempts to understand.
All he wanted was to be a coin gripped in her lovely hand.
I cannot recall his words; it’s been many years;
I translate only rot. Iffy syntax. Puffy grammar. Fears.
Listening to him, I could not distinguish the clear reason from the clearer tears.
But listen. You are too young to remember
The beauty, the cruelty, and how desperately he loved her.