Unfortunately there is one
Who cannot love; who is a photograph, but not the sun.
A photograph is produced with a sudden, narrow light
On a flat surface: sometimes we mistake it for real sight
And evidence of the thing, as if the thing were a thing’s flight.
She does not want to be seen; she looked unhappy
When, by accident, a poet ran into her today.
All he needed was a moment’s glance to see
A face lined with anger and misery.
All love begins with accident; the accident of place,
The accident of a kind voice murmuring through a kind face.
The accidents of love are kind even to the one
Who cannot love; who is a photograph, but not the sun.
Poets are those who fanatically want things to be just right.
Poets choose a photograph over living, a picture over sight;
They prefer an image to living, if the image, not living, looks exactly right.
We were that rare combination, since beautiful poets are rare;
Most of us, when we see beautiful life, only stop and stare,
But there are those, and it is sweet, trembling and rare,
Who are the beautiful life, who can create it with their voice,
With the deliberate way they look and move; beauty is a choice
They succeed in making with their very being—
They are the beauty you and I are only seeing.
And now in the picture of this poem I give you a picture of one
Who hides, because she is a photograph; she is not the sun;
Who hides, because she could not finally love, and the shame
Of this is too much, and she is reduced to taking snapshots of blame;
She is miserable—in her life the accident of love has returned to accident,
In which most of us wait and suffer and hope.
We were those two poets: beautiful, loving in cinemascope,
An affair like a long porn film, lived; not watched; it was paradise;
This is what joy truly is: a beautiful porn film; porn that is beautiful and nice,
Made by, and for poetry; in the country, and in beautiful escapes;
But she is not the sun; she cannot love. So roll those tapes.
