Oh, you know perfectly well it’s just another damned poem!

Poetry, I love you so much, if you had a human body, I would know I am a ghost.

Tonight, scarce ten minutes ago:

We Have Borne This Before

No one arose with the blinds when I lifted them early, but shadows that scattered—first half,
then full silhouettes—as they ran past the pillar of ashes that used to be flesh—the burnt calf
your uncanny mistranslator told you to read, though the kernel of wisdom within you spoke truth—
That calf was as human as you and I, even as innocence bled like a torn-out milk tooth.

Stories are buried alive in the instant, as soon as it weeps. Please don’t let it be heard,
and then please don’t let it be met with remembrance when always it’s only one ill-harbored word
that keeps on recalling itself to the mind that’s nigh broken with load-bearing not fed enough.
Truth is too humanly beautiful; love must not break it; it must not again come so rough.

Here’s what we do, all night long, and here’s reason enough why we do it: Your lone word won’t serve.
You’ll lie awake till all hours, but you’ll never quite catch the low Moon that shows love the fine curve
of her earliest light—her most glowing-wet wisdom. Soft as a child who’s first woken from sleep
filled with dreams that still smile as she shows you their shadows all over her face—filled with secrets you’ll keep

forever, should anyone ever once dare to imagine again where her small steps have been—
shadows of luminous madness, and visions new oncoming Moonlight casts everywhere, green
in their spirit and essence, though cold white and grey as the ashes of one who was ancient before
the death they awaited so long—When I lifted the blinds, I hear such a soft knock at my door.

Borne through the airs of new song and as light in the hands of live angels as children in prayer,
someone who knew it was time chose this pattern of magical rhymes to begin to declare
that we, who have gathered together this evening, will always remember how lovely—how more—
than anything, really, we all ought to be, and will be—in the end—who’ve all borne this before.