A POEM FOR THOSE WHO DESERVE IT Comments

I.

Truly, this poem is only for those
who deserve it:

a poem for those whose soles have lines
which are legends copied from
old maps, all
the errors and erasures included,
transformed by history, marks
seen today as mountain chains dozing
on the great fault-lines;

a poem for those whom you cannot simply
disassemble without incurring a sinkage
in your own basin, a poem
for all those who have
dismantled themselves and can
only be divided with themselves or equal love;

a poem for those who have reached a truce
with their own ruin and don't foist it on others,
who never whisper into the ears of history
and don't fidget in embarrassment,
a poem for those whose breath
was once mud and was lava, it was
stone and it was ash;

a poem for those whose hands let a torrent of ink
flow through them and let the river
give final shape to its banks;

a poem for those whose bodies
have experienced the cold onrush of ants, crusades
of alien poetry, and finally a new life,
a different word and a different body
which is love and is tenacity.


II.

A poem for those who have never trampled grass
to see what soil it grows from, for those who don't lean
on someone else's or a silenced voice,
because afraid for their patch of land -
for the kingdom at the end-point of a toothpick.

Neither for those dangling from the acid pines of pride,
nor for those undernourished or overfed, who spend
half their lives slyly filling their deficit with other people's stanzas and
the other half subtracting what they have acquired of this foreign balance;
neither is it for martyrs, weary poets,
nor those who
apparently, one day, will, but have never managed to so far,
O, misery, this poem is not for
cork stoppers that block a bottle's throat
and crumble there, ruining best vintage wine.

This poem is here and now,
and only for those who deserve it;
for those who, here and
now, understand it,
and not those
who might see it come aglow
in the crackling dark of 30 to 90 years,
if not even more, when I am everywhere dispersed
and nowhere as buoyant and full
of life as now.
Neither is it for those who keep pouncing on eternity,
from which they, at intervals, as dustmen or executioners,
throw other stronger and more fundamental voices
onto the rubbish heap of forgetfulness.
Je m'en fous. Ha!


III.

You must run your head against a brick wall,
not knowing when the wall will rise
or if your head will take it.
Not against the polystyrene, a torch in your hand,
or against a guarded door
left ajar, not with
an ally or in twos, not
through the coefficient of water
or honey, not
barefoot across dew-covered moss or red-hot coals,
your gaze fixed on the stars, no.
It won't do.

All of this comes later.
You must go with your own head through the time wall of a word
out of the toughest concrete and out at the other end -
because only when there's something left over,
only if there's really something left over -
this poem is for you.
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