Do you know why I love poetry?
It is not the sound of it, nor the fame.
Let me tell you what happened to me:
I fell in love with a name.
All the work that goes into a nation!
I love mine as a candle loves its flame.
I love the syllabification
My citizens speak, and kiss with, and we burn, and die, the same.
But look how my eye adores
This eye, who escaped to these colder shores
Barely intact, but with a strange name
I speak and love, as a candle feels its flame,
A quiet name of many syllables,
Now quietly spoken
Into my ear of a valley between its hills.
I saw. But when I heard, I was broken.
I intoned this liquid name for a day.
A name is how my voice adores
A voice—eternal and known—and it promises to stay.
The name my poetry loves is yours.
