What if my poetry were like classical music
And didn’t say anything? How long
Could I hold your interest with music?
We know a poem is similar to a song,
But what if this poem were like classical music
And said nothing. Would that be wrong?
I knew you once. You lived in your eyes,
And never had that much to say.
Speech is physical, comedy a surprise;
My poetry perhaps could do things that way,
And please exactly as you once made me happy,
A smirk or a smile, not saying a word,
Moving involuntarily a little closer to me,
Or voluntarily—it was all the same:
The evening quick with the excitement of a bird,
Crescendo and coda the first and second syllables of your name.
Isn’t this, then, like classical music?
An evening in the summer, the perfume
Of the flowers affecting us like music,
The weight of our love almost like doom?
What am I saying? I’m only thinking
How I felt then. Silence. And the stars winking.