He's a physics professor who dabbles in confessional poetry
as a way to organise his thoughts during office hours
and sometimes scratches something on the back of a used steno sheet
to leave beside her while she sleeps.
It always feels pretentious, of course, and he hardly knows
the least thing about how to make it good,
but it's the thought that counts.
Our close and common orbit
sends us tumbling out, away
from the origin, the heart of it,
of who we are and would wish to stay.
A marriage of sixty years, the first thirty building up speed, compressing months down to moments,
experiences becoming memories almost before they can happen,
the last thirty spent redefining "destination," happiness discovered after the fact,
having overshot it by a dozen light years and being too late to turn back around,
but isn't it lovely in the rear view?
Hurry, eagerness, and fear
dashing off to catch the train
blind us to the us, the now, the here,
the life we lose for the speed we gain.
She's a folk singer and thinks Modernism was the worst thing
ever to happen to poetry. She'd tear Ezra Pound a new one
if it didn't mean giving that Nazi sonofabitch a third hole
for his rhymeless shit to spew out of.
(She has more soapboxes than hours in the day, and he lives to hear them.)
Decades spend what's yours to give
and leave you with only this:
desperate hope that you won't outlive
the one whose bickering you will miss.
He teases her, calls her a New Formalist and compares her (not flatteringly, the way he means it)
to Frost, just to get under her skin,
but he admits she's right about rap music being catchy - the kids are onto something,
and that DJ Kool Herc guy maybe is bringing new life
to the art, so Dana Gioia had a point, too. She accepts his concession as the excruciatingly roundabout
"Yes, Dear"
he intends, having long since learned to tell the difference between a real argument and an agreement begrudgingly disguised as one.
(His love is expressed in reading up on the subject enough to be able to have an argument, in the first place.)
Start? End? No difference I can see.
Well enough, let's try this, then:
Step out into that unknown with me.
Circle back and meet ourselves again.
At the speed of light, no subjective time is experienced.
(May her memory be for a blessing.)
The entire existence of a photon, from its emission upon the sun,
through 93 million miles of transit in vacuum,
(
Blessed be she.)
until passing through your window in the early morning
to strike your face and wake you up,
(Let her name be blessed for ever and to all eternity.)
there is no beginning, end, or interval,
no moment, no sequence of events,
no before and after, no cause and effect,
no duration of being.
(Though she be high above all the blessings and hymns,
above all praises and consolations which are uttered in the world.)
I know those aren't the right words in the right order,
but Darling,
you can't tell me there's no poetry in it.
Iron Noder 2021, 12/30