Lyre Poem by Donald Revell

Before anything could happen,
flecks of real gold
on her mouth, her eyes more
convex than any others,
the ground spoke, the barrier
of lilacs spoke. What sang
in the black tree was entirely gold.
Her chair was empty.

New absence is a great figure
dark as the underskin of fruit.
At the center of the earth
it surrounds and amplifies the dead
whose music never slows down.

She came by car. I came by train.
We embraced. It was
at the foot of a hill steeply
crowned with apples
and a ruined fortress.
Imagination did not make the world.

Sweetness is the entire portion.
Before anything could happen,
happiness, the necessary
precondition of the world,
spoke and flowered over the hill.

When I was in Hell
on the ruined palisade,
either mystery or loneliness
kissed my open eyes.

It felt hugely convex, seeing
and immediately forgetting.

By contrast, what I imagined
later was nothing.