You’ll Confess

To say or not to say
can never be the thing –
it can’t be said in any way
that nears the power to sing.

And you’ll confess:
to you, the one true test
to which the depth
of an affection might subject

itself must surely be the wide –
sky-wide – degree to which
it can retain a claim
to silence. Violets and violence

and violins attempt to struggle in
to bleat their note, and you,
by rote, decline the invitation
to their dance. But you

may tell us secretly, perchance,
some time, inside the quiet
of an early afternoon too sunny
to have room for lies,

perhaps like this prized new
Spring day, today: whose wintry
cold refuses to give way
to shoots of yellow-green:

recruits who stubbornly
announce their right
to stay. You stood there
with him in the wind and in

the street within the ring
of an intolerable love:
imagining one soul was hand,
and one was glove.




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