20 April, 2007

Emptiness

In response to this post, and previous discussions of Tristesse, Sanjeev send me this magnificent poem by Stephen Dunn:

Emptiness

I’ve learned mine can’t be filled,
only alchemized. Many times
it’s become a paragraph or a page.
But usually I’ve hidden it,
not knowing until too late
how enormous it grows in its dark.
Or how obvious it gets
when I’ve donned, say, my good
cordovans and my fine tweed vest
and walked into a room with a smile.
I might as well have been a man
with a fez and a faux silver cane.

Better, I know now, to dress it plain,
to say out loud
to some right person
in some right place
that there’s something not there
in me, something I can’t name.
That some right person
has just lit a fire under the kettle.
She hasn’t said a word.
Beneath her blue shawl
she, too, conceals a world.

But she’s amazed
how much I seem to need my emptiness,
amazed I won’t let it go.

© Stephen Dunn.
Everything Else In The World.

Ah, alchemy…