the future of poetry
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
We only believe what we see with our fingers.
Will the children of ours need words trembling
and resembling nothing but the cold wind,
the whisper of the night?
Today, poetry is the quiet when the wind gives
to the dawn. You sit in a sleeping gown,
poetry is staring at the brushes
through the gray blue, the first blush of the light.
Today's poetry is this silent exchange of caresses.
But the future of poetry is disquieting.
Words are voices of a well rehearsed dance
or of stumbling in a role. Today we stage language
with puppets, overwhelmed with half a dozen
that we draw by strings, taking turns. We insist,
poetry belongs to the sets and stage lights.
I dread of letting you in, because everything exists
on the outside, in the light.
The dramatis personæ of future poetry
are a theater of the inside. Imagine
that all of the earthly space is the surface
of a sweater, that an angel pulls off
inside-out, revealing the myriad of dimensions.
