Manchester – united.
Posted by celticman on Tue, 23 May 2017
Stephen Dunn Sweetness: Staying Alive
Just when it seemed I couldn’t bear
one more friend
walking with a tumour, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world
except for the way I stumbled through it
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size
hand-size and never seeming small.
I acknowledge there’s no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet…
Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low
and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief
until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough
to make sense of what it means to be alive
then returns to the dark
source. As for me, I don’t care
where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s travelled
to come so far, to taste so good.
- celticman's blog
- Log in to post comments
- 457 reads