I saw this poem on Jonathan Carroll's website, which I check every day for news about when his new book "The Ghost in Love" will be published, and I liked it so much I had to borrow it:
The Nearness That Is All
by Samuel Hazo
Love's what Shakespeare never
said by saying, "You have
bereft me of all words, lady."
Love is the man who siphoned
phlegm from his ill wife's throat
three times a day for seven
years.
Love's what the Arabs
mean when they bless those
with children: "May God keep them
for you."
Or why a mother
whispers to her suckling, "May you
bury me."
Love's how the ten-year
widow speaks of her buried
husband in the present tense.
Love lets the man with one leg
and seven children envy no man
living and none dead.
Love
leaves no one alone but, oh,
lonely, lonelier, loneliest
at midnight in another country.
Love is jealousy's mother
and father.
Love's how death
creates a different nearness
but kills nothing.
Love
makes lovers rise from each
loving wanting more.
Love
says impossibility's possible
always.
Love saddens glad
days for no bad reason.
Love gladdens sad days
for no good reason.
Love
mocks equivalence.
Love is.
3 comments:
In a recent interview, Carroll said THE GHOST IN LOVE will be published in the US in October 2008 by Farrar Straus and Giroux
Sandra N.
Thanks, Sandra, I appreciate the update. But damn, that means I have to wait 11 months to read it. Maybe I'll learn to read Polish since it seems it's already been published in that country.
as they say on talk radio, "first time caller."
that's a very fine poem. now i'm off to cruise your blog.
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