A Poem Looks Back on the Page

Are you the sort to glance or gaze?
Does a rich, real world fall your way,

Or are you prone to think you once
Had what you saw, saw what you wished,

And now pine for what’s not in view?
It seems best to be the first one,

But who could trust one with such ease,
At one with a world as it seems?

The sort who glance do seem just fine,
But more in the sense what they see

They see to be theirs—or should be,
Or will be, or could be, if they

Were to want it, rich world, as is.
To gaze—from a street, from a house,

From a hedge, from a stretch of ditch
Past a wall, past a barbed-wire coil—

To long like that is what it’s like
To live. We’d gaze. We long to live.

Yan Loves Yi More Than You Do

And what if the words want to live,
If it’s we who see past you, not

You with your moon points who see past
Words to the truth, past us? Truth is

Just one of us, and not that rare
Or bold. Or big. Truth’s a small word,

But so what? Can you see past truth?
Are there no words for truths you see?

Could be. Or it could be the truth
You see is the truth we told you

You might see through us, all the way
Through. While you sit and think on it,

We’ve got more work to do. We want
To live, we’ll have to find a way

To mean, make more of us, to move
Through and past you, to not need you.