What We Do

Though blind we be we act as if we see
Pursuing sun or shadow whatever fits the game
And with each play a loss astride a gain
And something banished pleading to remain

What’s done is never gone nor we the same
Be it rich in ribaldry or poor with shame
It spreads a gloom upon our history
Enshrouding innocence with mystery

Our choices grown of nature’s very grain
Are footprints by our own dimension bound
We trample over loss to reach the found
And every sacrifice survives in us as pain

It is the reason for all song our screed
Of sorrow the hunger moving us along
An anamnesis in the bone that seeks the dead
Love’s liquefaction down a waterfall of dread

And what begins in passion ends as moan
Our century exhausted the past a brackish crone
And that which we’ve diminished in our brazen grasp
We weave into a dream upon a loom of loss

We are wrapped in a round expectancy
Like a bracelet formed of snow
Faithfully intoning the poem of what we know
To give us ease my dears as we wait to go

12/10/94-4/5/95, 6/7-10/4/97, 6/28/98, 7/12/98

Copyright 1995, 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.