Sunday, May 15, 2011

sweetness

just when it has seemed i couldn’t bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way i stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

i acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....

tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. his voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and i repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.
often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. as for me, i don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.

-stephen dunn

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