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The First Poem
Oct. 16th, 2010 12:46 amThis is the first poem I really noticed. Right now I am especially feeling that sense of longing, love, soul's desire that I associate with these words. When I first read it I cried, and perhaps for the first hundred times I read it after that as well, but those times are long behind me and this may well be my thousandth reread.
There's something about the middle of the night, not when you're up late but the actual middle of the night when you've done half your sleeping and your second half is soon to come, that inspires this attenuated soft but so very strong reaching feeling. I'm reminded of a song Jan and I had together called Wanna Be by Nine Days: "I wanna be where you sleep, where you laugh, where you breathe..." and I'm reminded of Margaret Atwood: "All hearts float in their own deep oceans of no light, wetblack and glimmering... most hearts say, I want, I want, I want..."
The first poem goes thusly:
The Quiet World
In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
-Jeffrey McDaniel
and Margaret Atwood's poem reads like this:
The woman who could not live with her faulty heart
I do not mean the symbol
of love, a candy shape
to decorate cakes with,
the heart that is supposed
to belong or break;
I mean this lump of muscle
that contracts like a flayed biceps,
purple-blue, with its skin of suet,
its skin of gristle, this isolate,
this caved hermit, unshelled
turtle, this one lungful of blood,
no happy plateful.
All hearts float in their own
deep oceans of no light,
wetblack and glimmering,
their four mouths gulping like fish.
Hearts are said to pound:
this is to be expected, the heart’s
regular struggle against being drowned.
But most hearts say, I want, I want,
I want, I want. My heart
is more duplicitious,
though no twin as I once thought.
It says, I want, I don’t want, I
want, and then a pause.
It forces me to listen,
and at night it is the infra-red
third eye that remains open
while the other two are sleeping
but refuses to say what it has seen.
It is a constant pestering
in my ears, a caught moth, limping drum,
a child’s fist beating
itself against the bedsprings:
I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?
Long ago I gave up singing
to it, it will never be satisfied or lulled.
One night I will say to it:
Heart, be still,
and it will.
My heart hasn't felt broken much lately; not in the last couple of weeks anyhow. So often I can feel the fault lines and scars on it. Tonight it's tender again, but tender and open.
There's something about the middle of the night, not when you're up late but the actual middle of the night when you've done half your sleeping and your second half is soon to come, that inspires this attenuated soft but so very strong reaching feeling. I'm reminded of a song Jan and I had together called Wanna Be by Nine Days: "I wanna be where you sleep, where you laugh, where you breathe..." and I'm reminded of Margaret Atwood: "All hearts float in their own deep oceans of no light, wetblack and glimmering... most hearts say, I want, I want, I want..."
The first poem goes thusly:
The Quiet World
In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
-Jeffrey McDaniel
and Margaret Atwood's poem reads like this:
The woman who could not live with her faulty heart
I do not mean the symbol
of love, a candy shape
to decorate cakes with,
the heart that is supposed
to belong or break;
I mean this lump of muscle
that contracts like a flayed biceps,
purple-blue, with its skin of suet,
its skin of gristle, this isolate,
this caved hermit, unshelled
turtle, this one lungful of blood,
no happy plateful.
All hearts float in their own
deep oceans of no light,
wetblack and glimmering,
their four mouths gulping like fish.
Hearts are said to pound:
this is to be expected, the heart’s
regular struggle against being drowned.
But most hearts say, I want, I want,
I want, I want. My heart
is more duplicitious,
though no twin as I once thought.
It says, I want, I don’t want, I
want, and then a pause.
It forces me to listen,
and at night it is the infra-red
third eye that remains open
while the other two are sleeping
but refuses to say what it has seen.
It is a constant pestering
in my ears, a caught moth, limping drum,
a child’s fist beating
itself against the bedsprings:
I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?
Long ago I gave up singing
to it, it will never be satisfied or lulled.
One night I will say to it:
Heart, be still,
and it will.
My heart hasn't felt broken much lately; not in the last couple of weeks anyhow. So often I can feel the fault lines and scars on it. Tonight it's tender again, but tender and open.
