USES OF THE LOST POETS by THOMAS MCGRATH

The poems of others he clipped and saved in those distant summers --
No farther from him than himself -- have faded into the dark,
Almost . . . the dew that died on the dry page weathering away --
Our of its image -- to climb the ladder of sun and wind
To the cradling sea gathered; and the metaphorical diamond,
That once worked names on glass, gone back to the soft country
Of carbon, memory, letters . . .
to the wounds of the bituminous man.

Child of fancy, what did you hope from those distant voices
Crying immortal anguish in the fallen world of your desk
Abandoned, now? Oh, the boy was only trying
To climb on the dewy stairs of the poem his contemporary built
Toward the sound of a friend, perhaps, or the name cut into glass, some . . .
Thing to hold more permanent than a flower pressed in a book --
If the firefly is summer, the poem @3might@1 be the star of time.

A century of cicadas has burnt holes in those paper heavens
In the few breaths that he drew while the poems lay curled in sleep,
In his grave notebook saved -- gone into time like smoke
With the winking generations of the firefly, the dew, the impermanent
Diamond . . .
And now he must fly his own kite in the dark of the moon
To gather what lightning may lead him dangerously out of that dark
And up the homing stairway to set a light on his desk.

For he is no boy, now, but himself the bituminous man:
Burning: and not to be diamond but for usefulness of that light --
His own -- for others: the wink and bite of international
Code to guide or home on for those on blind ways: to save
(Now that stars fall, the zodiac shifts and the lodestar drifts and lies)
Or hope to save (from loss and terror of these times)
To save the lonesome traveller lost on the nightbound roads.

Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org

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