For What It's Worth
“…Pain comes from the darkness
and we call it wisdom. It is pain.”
- Randall Jarrell
How does one write
about wisdom
in the face of so much grief
is a question every poet
should be ashamed to ask.
Meaning, no logic here
beyond the aching,
meaning, the saying
is always easy; the hard part
is in meaning.
Someone is speaking
to himself. Imagine his teeth
like bitter seeds
sprouting nothing but thorns.
A bramble of syllables
like thunder or the corpse
of a forest hurtling down a river.
Silly poet, as you write
the dying are still dying
and the clouds
are marking their calendars,
cradling their next hidden cruelty.
Let me remind you that cruelty
is merely a word
invented for something
older than water.
So is pain, and so is darkness.
So is wisdom. You want to find
something luminous here,
something sacred?
Something to salvage,
a makeshift raft for your words
to latch on to
as you drift toward that gulf
where only silence counts?
Listen: only silence counts.
Feel your tongue bleeding now,
savaged by thorns.
Let spittle and blood
fall like rain and water
that tree howling
inside your chest.
Pray that the branches
find a hand in search
of something to hold,
something rooted,
perhaps a bit of higher ground.- Mikael de Lara Co
