Lines In The Dark Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Words are scars,
I put them here to lace some kind of virgin,
To smell her like a flower,
And pick her up and take her across the canal
Where the airplanes lay sleeping half
Devoured by the cricketing earth;
I want to show her the dead,
The eternally kneeling men serving beneath the
Censer of swing-sets outside of the church
Where the clouds go climbing up the
Celestial spheres to the footsteps of stormy philosophers
To lose her in the green palatial spaces of the park,
Skipping school with her,
Blowing out the candles of the dark-
These words are scars, imperfect and wounded,
Sometimes dying men, swelling around the heart,
Primordial ululations I can’t even understand,
But feel like venom secreted on the radioactive battlefield
Of apocalyptic anonymity; they are beautiful weeds
I have pulled up screaming,
Jogging around her, crippled, unseen:
These words are all I have, but I have tended for her
Mercilessly-
I have left the bus and gone home with her
Throbbing in my chest, remaining there after
I have turned up the television, and thrown away
My school books-
After the impulsivity of my convictions,
I offer her the only thing which I have
Stolen from the very fields of the tongue, wishing to
Lie her down in the orange groves of Spain, under the
Shadow of Mars;
These words are scars whisper to a blind maiden,
So that she might see beyond the selfishness of my tears,
The wounds I have uprooted from the lapping furrows, for
Her, and crafted into singing friends who decorate
The highest evergreens:
Scars I would have her feel, to lay beside her every night,
These few trembling lines,
The damaged crèches of lippy pugilists,
Shyly grinning, like a knife gifted in the dark meant to
Romance and prod something beautiful that once enjoyed
Only daylight, to now come awake nocturnally like
A thick tulip outback amid the dunes, legs gently trained off
Her bicycle now open to me such a theatre,
Revealing a good meaning for my existence,
Proving that sometimes what is meant to be said does not
Have to be perfect to be beautiful.