Arguing Over Auden

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Needlework at Night

i - we had pitched a tent
under the cover of evening
and reined in our breathing;
dressed in a stitch of skin,
gilded by moonlight;
tied up and untied
in the silk of night,
wrapping us up in its nothing
but the watching shadows

ii - and all the patterns
they bring; templates outlining
the emperor's clothes we wear:
tailor-made material to tear
out its seams and sew up again;
threading on the cusp of a needle
by a single light, where the Moon
grows more in telling
the story of the Sun;

iii - when we started arguing;
which can sometimes be
good for the soul: a lightning
bolt that cuts the dark
to help see if there is a warm light
shining from a distant window;
feelings yielding freely to another
can become stronger
in themselves, too;

The Orphan of W.H. Auden

1 - we argued over Auden,
not incessantly, but decisively;
you loved the bad boy
of poetry to distraction;
as for for me; well I
could never understand him;
how could he disown his line
in his World War II poem
We must love one another or die?

2 - the poet in me had waxed
dramatically about him:
would you forgive
a father who orphaned
his child so readily? which
had elicited a smile from you; but
seriously: wasn't it cowardly
of a poet to fold his voice
when it had once unfolded the lie?

3 - and I wondered then
how you could love a man
with a poetic preference
to be less so easily;
and again I thought:
but after all you love me;
and I knew I gave no reason for you
to keep me; and had no way to
guess then where in you I might lie;

Where the Roses Grow

4 - the question brought a heaviness;
but then, where did I keep you? --
was it in your watchful gaze of desire
that looks for the mercy of words
to broker a cease-fire? or in your
breath that yearns and fills me
of your presence to always live
inside my body? -- as though
in our every night it is you

5 - who enters me
to bed down the seeds
that will take root to give
from its fruit below,
watered in every brook and stream
of human nature, where we
cast out the stones
others throw to dam the flow --
       in answer I say yes; and no:

6 - for I keep you where you
planted roses in me
in places thorns
used to grow;
I keep you in the memory
of the beauty
outside me, and to remind me
now and then to forgive Auden,
as mercifully as you forgive me.

Published 1 March, 2011

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