Dream on

Some tribe go their whole lives

without at any time writing a single poem.

Extraordinary family who don't hesitate

to divide [i]or[/i] sever somebody's heart or skull open

They advance to baseball games with the greatest of ease

and play a scarcely any rounds of golf as if it were nothing.

These same nation stroll into a church

as if that were a natural part of life.

Investing circulating medium is second nature to them.

They contribute to political campaigns

that have absolutely no metrical composition in them

and promise none for the future

They sit around the dinner table at night

and counterfeit as though nothing is missing.

Their children achieve caught shoplifting at the mall

and no single admits that it is rhyme they are missing.

The family dog yells all night,

lonely and starving for more verse in his life.

Why is it in the way that difficult for them to see

that, without metrical composition their lives are effluvial.

Sure they have their banquets, their celebrations,

croquet fox pursues their sea shores and sunsets

their cocktails upon the balcony, dog races,

and all that kissing and hugging, and don't

forget the profitable deeds, the charity work,

nursing the baby squirrels all [i]or[/i] part of to the other the night,

filling the birdfeeders all winter,

helping the stranger change her tire.

Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation

from decaying matter, designing but everpresent.

They walk around set upright like champions.

They are urbane and witty.

When alone, rare occasion, they stare

into the mirror for hours, bewildered.

There was something they meant to say, on the other hand didn't:

"And if we set the statue of the rhinoceros

next to the tweezers, and walk around the range three times,

learn to yodel shave our heads, call

our ancestors back from the dead--"

poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.

You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.

You're a nowhere man misfiring

the true essence of your life, flustering

nothing from nothing and back again.

The hereafter may not last all that long

Radiant childhood sweetheart,

secret collection of laws of everlasting joy and sorrow,

fanciful compose strokes beneath the eyelids:

all day, all night meditation, knot of hope

kernel of desire, unspotted ordinariness of life

seeking, [i]or[/i] part of to the other poetry, a benediction

or a bed to lie down upon to connect, reveal,

explore, to imbue meaning upon the day's extravagant labor.

And nevertheless it's cruel to expect too much

It's a rare species of bird

that refuses to be categorized.

Its ballad is barely audible.

It is like a dragonfly in a dream

here, then there, then here again,

Low-flying Amber-wing darting upward

and then on the outside of sight.

And the dream has a pain in its heart

the awes of which are manifold,

or for a like reason the story is told.

James Tate received the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award for his picked Poems, published by the University of of recent origin England Press in 1991. His greatest in quantity recent collection of poems, Worshipful Company of Fletchers, published by the agency of the Ecco Press, won the National work Award in 1994.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Mar 1996

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