Poem
After lines from Muriel Rukeyser
I.
‘I don’t believe
that poetry can save
the world.’ And again you say it has
not solved the ultimate,
most quiet mystery. I myself,
mute, refuse to assert
that we should shirk obscurity,
that it is without purpose. I myself,
solipsistic by nature, have been saved by its expressus.
Empty without the empty
darkness, we see no unknown,
and it is in this very dearth,
that we conjure the light of ourselves.
II.
For poetry does not exist
to neatly brim, tranquilize, explain,
but to breach the lip of each cup,
to shift the seeming water into mud
and back again.
My hope is for you, for us
(shrouded as we are in solitude)
to discover that an answer
is just a funereal veil
conclusion uses to fool you.
III.
Now you look about
and weigh the world
as finished, but only poets
discern what is so near
and yet scarcely clasped:
every pursuit is an attempt
at renewal and a chance
to touch a hand, to save it.
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