Please don't go down
to the bridge
for it will make no difference
in the end
War is inevitable
an espionage against life
and the martyrs always
fall for all the old stories
I love you too much
to lose you again
Not like that
For if you go down to the bridge tonight
Then I too must go with you
Please don't go down
to the Delgado Bridge tonight
For surely I must accompany you
as your loving husband
I rremain faithful to the cause
but I love you more than life itself
so I will go with you
down to the bridge
Your Ira
LETTER TO MY SULLIED ART
Because my art is suffering
offering service to the void
the unborn legacy of words
awaiting birth, or rebirth
because nothing is new
we are continually reinventing ourselves
passing it forward
I want to tell you
about the way the eye sees
a certain angle of light
the way the shadows ease their grief
across the web of the labyrinth
hunting loose aspects of crystal
trapped within stone
Name it, call it feldspar and citrine
garnet and quarttz, serpentine and blueschist
But the deer ignore the pattern of the labyrinth
daintily picking their way across stones
At the crest of the hill
where buckeye and oak meet the eons
a horse's mane of clouds
shrouds the sky—whether in grief or as a bride
And so I write to fill the void
and settle into an easy chair
in the corner of a dream
These words, a gift,
a lone hawk keening in the wind
What was it Picasso said? A lie? Truth?
Yours,
Maureen
BODICE RIPPER
—after Ezra Pound's The River Merchant's Wife
She married too young
but he was a great lord
who said absence
made the heart stronger
but the insecurities
One never comes back
Did the river take him?
So many undercurrents
written into the river
He loved her
passing of time
They were paired butterflies.
She thought him dead,
never coming back
It was a great leveler
of circumstances, the turning tide,
not translated, nor translatable.
She could never send that letter
into the void, let the river take it,
a paper boat jettisoned
on the far shore of regret.
How we communicate in this age
of artifice and intimacy
the lie that makes us
realize the truth.
