Still on a Jack Gilbert kick this week. I love the synaesthetic allusions in these lines. Plus, it's a nearly full moon as I write this, so the cover of this book appeals to me, as do the lines of this poem.
After Love
He is watching the music with his eyes closed.
Hearing the piano like a man moving
through the woods thinking by feeling.
The orchestra up in the trees, the heart below,
step by step. The music hurrying sometimes,
but always returning to quiet, like the man
remembering and hoping. It is a thing in us,
mostly unnoticed. There is somehow a pleasure
in the loss. In the yearning. The pain
going this way and that. Never again.
Never bodied again. Again the never.
Slowly. No undergrowth. Almost leaving.
A humming beauty in the silence.
The having been. Having had. And the man
knowing all of him will come to the end.
Beautiful, calm feeling in it.
ReplyDeleteOh, Jack Gilbert. I forget about him, and then come back, and it's always wonderful. One of my favorite lines of his: "We must risk delight" (from "A Brief for the Defense")
ReplyDeleteYes - Sarah that's a great line.
ReplyDeleteWe must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.
Love!