1992

Music

From the very first notes in a minor key
You could sense, follow and anticipate the eventual final chords.
And this is why the joy is always mixed with sadness.
And isn't part of the pleasure that these intense feelings
Shake us from our otherwise uncomprehending, hypocritical calm?
There was something in your letters that brought all of this
To mind, as I, optimistic as ever, read them here
On this sunny hilltop in Italy. And I am reminded
As I read them that they were not written to me, and
That when words well up first from the heart
And then from the throat and only out of fear form in the mouth
There is a hunger in the receiving of them that can be easily
Overlooked. Then comes the thought that too often
We want things to end, wanted them to begin in their endings,
Final out of the earliest of their subjugated necessities,
Torn from the foundations of houses, wedded to the oceans
Of origin, blued and oranged in the frightful neglect
Of future geometries.