Is it time to write the sere and yellow leaf poem? Cavafy's body reviews an amorous career. Millay chants an iambic requiem for lips and arms that sloshed over the brim of her memory. But I'm not sure it's time to erect a body-part memorial totem. There may be yet another who'll twine with the through the interstices of life's design. Should he not appear, that hope without a name, still love's coals will shimmer heat to be breathed into a plume of flame or schools of sparks, a paradox that metes out warmth to cool life's burns, a balm proffered to the swarm of humans bubbling by in time. That flame, those sparks exclaim in the notes of the corner man blowing the brass flower of his horn into the city's evening. |