There's something I've never known when I get up in the morning. Dead children fly off in the shape of question marks, the doe's backward glance at the stillborn fawn. I don't know what it is in the morning, as if incomprehension beds down with me on waking. What is the precise emotional temperature when the young man hangs himself in the jail cell with his father's belt? What is the foot size of the Beast of Belsen? This man in his overremembered life needs to know the source of the ache which is an answer without a question, his fingers wrapped around the memory of life, as Cleopatra's around the snake's neck, a shepherd's crook of love. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NEW LOVE AND OLD by SARA TEASDALE UPON A DYING LADY by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS; OR, NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE ISLAND by ROBERT BROWNING SONG: 4 by EDWARD ESTLIN CUMMINGS THE MORNING-GLORY by MARIA WHITE LOWELL TO LADY ANNE HAMILTON by WILLIAM ROBERT SPENCER |