Adrift

What a day
         the sun breaks through
and suddenly it’s spring
         and everyone has a lively step
I pop into the bookshop
         and browse the complete poems
of Charles Olson a complete poet
         a bear of a man whose father
delivered the mail all his life
         and did so proudly
I flick through the poems
         pausing here and there
when something catches my eye
         I read of a dog a cat and the moon
and then I read that America
         has no history and I think
Who needs history
         what is this history fetish
why not be content to live
         in the day
with all the slings and arrows
         of outrageous good fortune ?

That a man’s creative life
         can be reduced to so few pages
that disturbs me
         and the fact that all leaves
are leaves of grass
         and that all song
even that of the kingfisher
         will one day fall silent

What kind of a profession
         is poetry—poets should get a job
poets should not whine
         about the state of the union
not think that they are
         a law unto themselves
The body is a shell
         a housing that can grow old
and decrepit even as the mind
         flourishes beneath the rain

Sing of her who has a beautiful face
         whose eyes are unsung beacons
sing of them and of her breasts
         her high cheekbones her hands
that twist and turn to the rhythm
         of her thoughts her kindly thoughts

Olson’s poems were pathways
         were routes mapped out with words
Out of Gloucester out of the geographies
         of his youth he drew up charts
by which to navigate the turbulent waters
         his imagination gripped by a white whale
What does not change / he wrote
         is the will to change

John Lyons