Glosses on texts by William Desmond
My Book on Aging
warns that less libido could
mean an Eros be-
yond Eros kicks in.
So that’s what I’ve been feeling.
I smile inwardly
at the young couple—-
his razor-cut skull glistens
as he leans in —- O
the sun is shining
on the snow as they shake it
off. Eros be kind
to us, young and old,
and if I’ve been true to you,
let us still be friends.
Incandescent bits
fall from the awnings outside
this noisy cafe.
My companion
talks on. I pay attention
to the random flash
of excess brilliance
between us and the winter
sun, tranced in the show
of snow’s aftermath,
eclipses moving mind to
strange affinities.
‘Old men ought to be
explorers,’ you say. Poet,
it is quite enough
that I care for my
dead, forgive the living for
making a hell of
earth, and enjoy the
gifts of the mind-and-body
remaining to me….
‘Still and still moving,’
you say, ‘through the emptiness.’
But what moves me finds
me unmoved by the
lines in your face, the trace of
Eros not friendship.
The measures you im-
pose on our common fate ex-
ceed the pleasure of
your verse, which measures
you. Humility is hard
to fake when it’s false.
It takes a snow day
to redeem the idea of
communication.
Seeing the snow we
look up from our screens, we kill
the radio, we wait.
The silence of snow
becomes a backdrop for things
with big things to say,
abstract things like Time
and Being. ‘We are always
communicating
our several loves.
We can’t say our names, they mean
nothing to us because
we are many not
one. We happen together:
in community
as children outside
scream with ecstasy to feel
our touch hot and cold.’
I need the big words
of religious philosophy—-
words like Being, Time—-
to pay homage to
the beauty of little things.
Heterogeneity
(light terminal sounds
often lost to breath): distinct
otherness in all
things, each thing only
once—-a glorious once. Flakes
make visible the
storm. Geometries
in the millions only
once and without names.
As I stare into
the bright Winter sunshine on
the tearoom floor and
wait for scheduled snow,
I think about our last trip
abroad together.
We were in Bath. You
sat on the hotel patio
and counted passers-
by who leaned on sticks
like you. Gallows humor. Then
you’d go back to bed.
You were resilient.
A sunny chair, dinner at
our favorite place.
The Abbey itself
a few blocks away. Too far.
I’ve come to love you
for the equipoise
of time and eternity
you managed throughout.
The poetry does
not matter, said the poet.
I’d agree but now,
in the time between
chores, it is all that matters.
Dust motes dance in harsh
mid-Winter sunlight.
Elbow grease and prayer not-
withstanding, I find
that time consents to
eternity’s otherness,
which is poetry.
