Corydon & Alexis, Redux
By D. A. Powell
and yet we think that song outlasts us all: wrecked devotion
the wept face of desire, a kind of savage caring that reseeds itself
and grows in clusters
oh, you who are young, consider how quickly the body deranges itself
how time, the cruel banker, forecloses us to snowdrifts white
as god’s own ribs
what else but to linger in the slight shade of those sapling branches
yearning for that vernal beau. for don’t birds covet the seeds of the
honey locust
and doesn’t the ewe have a nose for wet filaree and slender oats
foraged in the meadow
kit foxes crave the blacktailed hare: how this longing grabs me
by the nape
guess I figured to be done with desire, if I could write it out
dispense with any evidence, the way one burns a pile of twigs
and brush
what was his name? I’d ask myself, that guy with the sideburns
and charming smile
the one I hoped that, as from a sip of hemlock, I’d expire with him
on my tongue
silly poet, silly man: thought I could master nature like a misguided
preacher
as if banishing love is a fix. as if the stars go out when we shut our
sleepy eyes
For Haines Eason
“corydon & alexis, redux” first appeared in Poetry Magazine. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
Source:
Poetry Magazine
(Poetry Foundation, 2006)
