Thursday, August 27, 2009

Too Early (Paul's) Valentine

Still in the tragic half
of cozy morning before belief
steps in with its one giant misperception
must be forwarded
separately postage due

still in the darkness that won’t
quite recognize itself cornered
still breathing diaphragmatically
as if nothing will happen
until it gets back

in the earliest thing you can’t
even imagine happening
all we love is but
the shattered picture
of what’s really here.

3 comments:

William Keckler said...

I was reading an anthology of German poetry yesterday.

It was terrible.

They had tried for the L.C.D. in choosing, since they could only choose 1-3 poems from each poet.

German poetry has never been the greatest anyway.

But this was awful.

Only when the terrible late nineteenth century arrives do poets begin to awaken.

Although (one could make the case) what was the point of awakening any earlier?

This poem would have helped the collection immensely.

Peter said...

Hey Bill, Do you know Ingeborg Bachmann, been reading her collected, "Darkness Spoken":

Heal our eyes
so that we can find again the words.
so multi-colored,that I can say to you.

Maybe she was speaking to German poetry itself.

Anonymous said...

I only know her through that great Rothenberg/Joris anthology (forget the name now...more than one volume).

And a few scattered poems here and there.

I'll have to look online.