who
st~nds
before himself, whose longing charts
the one good moment a man and woman had
before the world fell into disrepair?
You seek it again: love and its comforts,
the luminous, vague certainty of a life
after this one, a man walking around
in your shoes, a man who is all of you
and more.
It
is a dim photograph sent
from beyond: mother and father and child,
a small boy wearing your father's face.
If
you are alone in your own life-
and you're not - what is it you and you
alone have suffered? When love and the species
flicker and go out, it's too late to ask:
What have I not done? What have I done?
Mark Jarman
STORY HOUR
What were they saying, the storytellers,
The newsbringers, the fabulists,
The gathered tribe of the living room?
Even in the stories they told,
If
the pieces that came clear fitted right,
They did not remember this desperation
To know, that sent a tense child off
To a tense sleep, dropping him, helpless noun,
Through the smoky verbs of his body,
Throwing out images even more meaningless
Than a few sweet words
