[Milton-L]

[Tony Demarest]

The following poem will appear in issue 64 of The New York Quarterly- I was ignoring my wife one day by preparing for a class on PL- one would think after being married for almost 40 years that certain habits would be tolerated- so I wrote this rather than a tract on divorce.Happy birthday John!Tony


Unmercy

 

I should be as careful with your heart

as I am with my glasses: as if to read

one more line of Milton demands

the span of years to know when love

turns deep. 

                   Hell will
be there days beyond

the time it takes for my hand to reach 

across to touch yours while archangels rain down

past our window without a single shadow,

and the confusion and clamor of their fading

wings dissolve in the hiss of melting ice.

 

Our garden suffers no fruit in winter; 

brown and cracked like old bones, 

what is left from autumn waits for 

spring engraving and the kind thievery

of sculpting hands. 

       Still, it
is ours

to lose. This is no war in heaven, no 

heroics here: only my folly remains epic.





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