No one stole your money.
No one stole your whole heart
then climbed into a stolen plane
and stole away into the night
to disappear entirely, stealing
darkness itself, then dawn.
What name would you even call
into the shadows between
here and gone, yours and no one’s,
what color could you give it,
this shade of something
slightly less than life?
Better to leave it whole.
Pure death—like an unmined diamond.
Keep the light of the fire
away from it—clean, untempered
by the tedious heat of language—
safe from your magpie, morbid way
of turning and turning
your pain in your hands
until you’ve crushed it to dust.
And anyway, who are you to say
I lost the world? No one. To admit
that you held the world at all?
that you held the world at all?
Mock Orange By Louise GlĂĽck
It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.
I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man’s mouth
sealing my mouth, the man’s
paralyzing body—
and the cry that always escapes,
the low, humiliating
premise of union—
In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.
How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?
