Nor Fire, Nor Fate Their Bays Shall Blast

If they could, these words would like
To hymn the hours, not the names

Of those who wrote poems and died.
We’re a slight twitch in the mind,

A tongue that has to be learned
If it wants to join the teeth

To free the hook from the mouth,
Free the snapped lines, and speak out.

We want to live. We can’t quite.
But if you know us, know this tongue,

Your own thoughts lost in the waves
Can join with us to sing out—

Each life’s worth more songs and poems
Than the most famed, loved lives get—

Not for what was great or wise
Or good as some gold-flaked saint—

But for all the small hours spent,
In a room, out of doors, lost

In the waves as they went. Wreaths
Should be placed on those fine days

When a mere beast, bone and flesh,
Lived the poems of rain and sun,

The slow turns of lights from lights,
The grey like calm, a wool cloak

That the beast slipped off and placed
On the bare, curled-up words. There.