Someone says Tristan
& Isolde, the shared cup
& broken vows binding them,
& someone else says Romeo
& Juliet, a lyre & Jew’s harp
sighing a forbidden oath,
but I say a midnight horn
& a voice with a moody angel
inside, the two married rib
to rib, note for note. Of course,
I am thinking of those Tuesdays
or Thursdays at Billy Berg’s
in LA when Lana Turner would say,
“Please sing ‘Strange Fruit’
for me,” & then her dancing
nightlong with Mel Torme,
as if she knew what it took
to make brass & flesh say yes
beneath the clandestine stars
& a spinning that is so fast
we can’t feel the planet moving.
Is this why some of us fall
in & out of love? Did Lady Day
& Prez ever hold each other
& plead to those notorious gods?
I don’t know. But I do know
even if a horn & voice plumb
the unknown, what remains unsaid
coalesces around an old blues
& begs with a hawk’s yellow eyes.
I really like this poem, it flows with an unmatchable grace. The allusions to the famous couples gives an intimate feeling to the poem. I don't really understand what it is trying to say but it is really pretty.
ReplyDeleteThe allusions give the poem the element of love without saying the word until line 23. All of the allusions talk about dysfunctional relationships like the affair in the first one or shallow love in Romeo and Juliet's case which leads into the final part of the poem which tries to explain why we cannot find love the first time. I like the imagery "coalesces around an old blues and begs with hawk's yellow eyes."
ReplyDeleteThe understandable and meaningful portrays the unknown feeling of the emotion love. Love is a hard thing to get down and this poem describes that finding your true love will take multiple tries. However, once you see the one you'll know that you are experiencing that un-describable feeling called love.
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