Has the darkness lifted?
Is the round bud of the maple not filled with longing?
How close can a room hold two, not speaking or touching?
Does every thought glint, is every fire stolen?
Is everything in the world immersed in the petroleum of desire?
Have the clocks been wound, has the coffeemaker been unplugged?
Has the crying from behind the keyhole subsided?
Do you see where the fabric holds the shape of shoulders?
Do you feel how the music rinses us clear?
Has the rain fed you with riddles?
Have I not been permeable to everything that has come?
Would you tell me where to lay this burden down?
Do you love the sweetness that precedes decay?
Do you love the light behind every green blade?
Do you love me homely?
Do you take me plain?
Have I not met you at every detour?
Can you tell me what it is that brings you back?
Each time, have we bent our heads to drink the water?
Would you lie here with me beneath this ceiling of stars?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Always a Story
- Landscape with Sudden Rain, Wet Blooms, and a Van Eyck Painting
- Letter to Implacable Things
- Landscape, with Cave and Lovers
- Miniatures
- Letter to Self, Somewhere Other than Here
- Ghazal with a Few Variations
- Letter to Silence
- Landscape, with Returning Things
- Postcard to Grey
- Not Yet There
- Letter to the Street Where I Grew Up (City Camp Alley, Baguio City)
- Between
- Parable of Sound
- Letter to Providence
- Glint
- The Beloved Asks
- Letter to Longing
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Interlude
- Villanelle of the Red Maple
- Letter to Leaving or Staying
- Salutation
- Letter to Love
- Letter to Fortune
- Territories
- Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
- Dear season of hesitant but clearing light,
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Singing Bowl
- [temporarily removed by author]
- Risen
- Refrain
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Dear heart, I take up my tasks again:
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Twenty Questions
- Risk
- Vocalise
- Tremolo
- Interior Landscape, with Roman Shades and Lovers
- Bird Looking One Way, Then Another
- Gypsy Heart
- Like the Warbler
- Landscape with Carillon
- Letter to Ardor
- Landscape, with Salt and Rain at Dawn
- Marks
- Landscape, with Sunlight and Bits of Clay
- Slaying the Beast
- Measures
- In a Hotel Lobby, near Midnight
- Landscape with Shades of Red
- Between the Acts
- Letter to Duty
- Letter to Nostalgia
- You
- Song of Work
- Balm
- Landscape, with Wind and Tulip Tree
- From the Leaves of the Night Notebook
- Letter to What Must be Borne
- Redolence
- Letter to Myself, Reading a Letter
- Night-leaf Tarot
- Trauermantel
- Foretelling
- Aubade, with Sparrow
- Reverie
- Mineral Song
- Layers
- Prayer
- Proof
- Landscape as Elegy for the Unspent
I was enjoying the playfulness of this, but at the end I decided that this is gorgeous.
“Has the crying from behind the keyhole subsided?
Do you see where the fabric holds the shape of shoulders?
Do you feel how the music rinses us clear?
Has the rain fed you with riddles?”
Such a light touch, and not overly clever. The wording and sound still wins out. I love this.
I believe this is one of the best poems on Via Negativa. Pablo Neruda (The Book of Questions) has nothing on Luisa.
Your comparison (though comparisons should never be made) with Neruda is not far fetched. This is the poetry I love.
“Do you see where the fabric holds the shape of shoulders?” – Beautiful!
“Have I not met you at every detour?/ Can you tell me what it is that brings you back?…/ Each time, have we bent our heads to drink the water?/ Would you lie here with me beneath this ceiling of stars?”
ANSWERS
Each detour is also a question:
Should I stay, leave, or just decay?
Too many daggers can only pierce
so much or so deep they crumple
before they reach a coup de grace.
I have but one heart to wound,
it is all I have, all I can give or will. No more.
But call this a punch-bag syndrome,
and I come back like coming back
has run out of style. I come home
for more rending, more hurts like
these were the only way I could steel
a trembling and fearful heart that
it might beat with a more puissant throb
and pump life to what has gone moribund.
Because this longing has parched my tongue,
I come back to drink of the salving water
that once pulsed out of our home’s wellspring.
I can only be brave then to lie down
with you beneath this ceiling of stars.
—Albert B. Casuga
04-10-11
Some terrrific lines here, Albert. I especially liked “I come back like coming back/ has run out of style.” I would probably have written “stronger” rather than “more puissant,” though — the latter seems unnecessarily Latinate and affected.
“Puissant”. Was trying to use a sound that suggested the weakened heart flow, while at the same time using sibilants to objectify a bit of self-loathing. Yes, “stronger” is less affected. Thaks, D.
Good to know you had a solid reason for it — and of course mine is just one reader’s reaction. Many poets delight in more difficult words; that’s a valid path, too.