The Poem Is An Answer To a Question....

Painting by George Fredrick Watts


"THE POEM IS AN ANSWER TO A QUESTION
OR QUESTIONS NO ONE, INCLUDING THE POET,
HAD THOUGHT TO ASK," ANN LAUTERBACH,
SLAVES OF FASHION.


She knew the ritual, the rite.
It was to cease
Looking ahead,
Getting a vague glimpse of
a vague destination,
Seeing the leaning of black smoke curves
From a straight, cylinder-like,
but perceived flat,
Or something bubbly and domelike
Like fallen, colored raindrops,
the frosted flashes
Of neon through fog.

Before, what is called "objects," but objects
Are transformed through observation.
Orisons turn objects into orchestras.
What is declared "overt" perverts the polis.

Orpheus with his music could stack stone
on stone, build agoras. With his music,
Orpheus could tame and subjugate wild animals
into carnival entertainers,
Into the feature dish of a feast.

Orpheus could through the lyricism
of his poetry
Build walls for a garden,
a garden with goldfinches.
Orpheus could with poetic music invent a girl
Who sat by oranges, wore a red dress.
Like Adam he could name, so he named
His imaginary creation, Eurydice.

So with his music, he had Eurydice die,
Then with his music, he went to Hades
To charm with music the Eumenides
And resurrect Eurydice to follow him.

But Eurydice knew the precariousness
of her existence.
She, the musically created, knew
she transcended her creator,
She also knew the ritual,
the looking back over the shoulder,
The attempt to return that renders
the attemper a non-existent.
After a long anxious pause,
she tried to embrace
The destination, the distance,
found her arms empty,
But her breasts pierced with arrows
from crenellated towers,
So Eurydice
Spun around
To stare
At what
Had been behind.


Duane Locke

Posted over on Seeker Magazine