Catherine Owen
Demi-Glosa on Two Lines by Derek Walcott
(for Frank Bonneville, 1974-2003)
“I didn’t want this poem to come from the torn mouth/I didn’t want this poem to come from his salt body”
The Wind in the Dooryard
Still, after all this time, I dream of him.
Spring again, six years since his darkest leap,
his life, the in & out of wards, a drought
and nothing curing what cannot be healed.
At night, the wilderness of his eyes returns,
the endless walks against his death,
he vanishing in stations of that final choice,
a choice when choosing has no further face
before the imposition of the sheet’s white truth.
I didn’t want this poem to come from the torn mouth.
My love for him the love for art
: irrational, immense, a doomed pursuit.
The small immortalities a gift or maybe
just a blinder act. All he was has now come back
in the under-oceaned world of sleep: the crazy
vortex of his grief, his mouth on mine, unsteady
heat of when his flesh found flesh in dark.
And my life will not forget his life, nor
his death ever leave my mind empty
though I did not want this poem to come from his salt body.
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