For the protagonist and the cup of coffee we share...

A favorite...oh how I do love fire.

I Pity the Wind
Gerald Stern



I am taking off my glasses
so I can stare at the little candles
and the glass of water
in pure darkness.

I am letting a broom stand
for my speech on justice
and an old thin handkerchief
for the veil of melodrama I have worn for thirty years.

I am dragging in Euripides
for his strange prayer
and my own true Hosea
for his poem on love and loyalty.

After a minute I fall down dead
from too much thought
and turn to the freezing wall
for an hour of quiet sadness.

I start my practice later,
twenty minutes for breathing,
twenty minutes for song,
twenty minutes for liberation and ritual.

My poem is about the airshaft
and Zoroaster
and the soul caught in its last struggle
with the two-headed cow, father of everything.

My elation has something to do with light,
my misery with darkness,
my secrecy and fear and distance
with neither.

I end up with a pillow
and a painted floor, as I always do,
my head on the flowers, a little pocket for air,
my right arm drifting and dangling.

I end up just humming,
true to myself at last,
preparing myself for the bridge
and the hand that will lead me over, the hand I adore.

I pity this hero,
so in love with fire,
so warlike,
so bent on teaching.



p.s. I couldn't resist you and your agile fingers as they swept over my heart filling it with glory. To follow the mass, my own words prey.