My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer

ON READING LAST YEAR’S LOVE POEMS

His songs of disbelief will fill our hearts As long as winter lasts, as long as we Are distant partners of this agony Too far apart to keep each other warm. So let our hearts lie dead like fields of snow Unloved, untouched until the distant spring Grows closer and the gentle birds return And fill the empty air, and sing. ON READING LAST YEAR’S LOVE POEMS The heart’s a sprinting thing and hammers fast. The word is slow and rigid in its pace. But, if they part once, they must meet at last As when the rabbit and the tortoise race. Words follow heartbeats, arrogant and slow As if they had forever in their load, As if the race were won, as if they go To meet a dying rabbit on the road. Then, step by step, the words become their own. The turtle creeps ahead to win the prize. But, ah, the sweeter touch, the quicker boon Is lost forever when the rabbit dies. ORPHEUS IN ATHENS The boy had never seen an honest man. He looked among us every night he said. He eyed each stranger like Diogenes And took him with his lantern into bed. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 39 39 ...