For He Who Neither Comes Nor Goes
by Sam Silva
The vows I have broken
are winter ice
melting to shatter
with winter done.
In a world of things
touched by the Sun
I was a vagrant in my youth!
I lived in basements
full of steam
and scratched my love poems
in a dream
where birds fly off
to paradise
like souls from bodies of the dead.
I was a ghost without a head
living on tins
of beans and meat
while Winter pushed
its long winds here
… ghostly food
and ghostly beer!
… that awkward sin
of poverty
much more extreme
than other sins
and lifted up as what to eat
and what to drink
and what to breathe
and what to smoke.
Ah! Such a sacramental joke!
Such a blasphemy … this way to live!
So when you grow old and fly away
to a paradise the seasons give
and just as now love brings desire
… so then … a warm breeze soothes your ache!
Be puzzled a bit by death's sweet choir!
Remember the man without the fire
along with every perfect, easy, vow
you never broke
and every sweet and easy law
you never choose to break …
volume 12(6)
March 15, 2008
This poem is copyright © 2007,
Sam Silva, all rights reserved.
Find more poems by Sam Silva.
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