Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Anthony Hecht


A LETTER

                         I have been wondering
	
            What you are thinking about, and by now suppose
		
                         It is certainly not me.
	
            But the crocus is up, and the lark, and the blundering
		
                         Blood knows what it knows.

It talks to itself all night, like a sliding moonlit sea.

		
                         Of course, it is talking of you.
	
            At dawn, where the ocean has netted its catch of lights,
		
                         The sun plants one lithe foot
	
            On that spill of mirrors, but the blood goes worming through
		
                         Its warm Arabian nights,

Naming your pounding name again in the dark heart-root.

		
                         Who shall, of course, be nameless.
	
            Anyway, I should want you to know I have done my best,
		
                         As I'm sure you have, too.
	
            Others are bound to us, the gentle and blameless
		
                         Whose names are not confessed

In the ceaseless palaver. My dearest, the clear unquaried blue

		
                          Of those depths is all but blinding.
	
            You may remember that once you brought my boys
		
                         Two little woolly birds.
	
            Yesterday the older one asked for you upon finding
		
                         Your thrush among his toys.

And the tides welled about me, and I could find no words.

		
                         There is not much else to tell.
	
            One tries one's best to continue as before,
		
                         Doing some little good.
	
            But I would have you know that all is not well
		
                         With a man dead set to ignore

The endless repetitions of his own murmurous blood.

copyright 1994



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