To listen to an audio recital of the poem, click here
She
came to me in deepest darkness
unexpected
- unexpected!? -
never
was poet more atheist of her existence
But
she came to me
illuminatress
of the darkness
she
grew like seeds of light upon my eyelids
washed
them clean like morning dew
(these
were the kinds of simile I used
before
her visitation)
so
beautiful - so beautiful
She
came
I
understood
to
make me eloquent
but
her presence merely numbed me speechless
“Is
it really you?” I asked
the
sort of asinine banality
a
stammerer might speak at Horeb
or
a bosun of Odysseus before the rocks
but
surely not a poet-now-to-be?
“Is
it? Is it really you?”
She
smiled but did not speak
for
she had brought speech for my lips
not
her own
“Is
it? Is it really you?
The
same who came to Milton
and
led him like a guide dog into Paradise?
The
same who windlassed Dante through the Inferno?
The
same who bridled Shakespeare
and
rode him into Elsinore and Dunsinane?
The
same who deafened Beethoven,
starved
Mozart,
drove
Van Gogh to madness
sent
Mandelstam to Voronezh?
Is
it? Is it really you?”
She
smiled, nodded, shone
but
spoke neither no nor yes.
Already
this poem was half-written
even
as I pretended she had got the wrong address "The Muse" is published in "Welcome To My World, Selected Poems 1973-2013", The Argaman Press. Click here to purchase the book.
You can find David Prashker at:
Copyright © 2014 David Prashker
All rights reserved
The Argaman Press
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