I want to be beautiful for you.
And so I write this poem, which is more beautiful than I can ever be.
I can't write it forever, but I can write it now.
I want to be beautiful for you.

Sometimes the words frighten you, they're so faithful.
You turn away and leave them, come back,
they're still waiting, their patience is immutable.
You speak, and they obey; you're silent, and they concur.
They will never betray you, although they may
follow the harsh course of your betrayal
which you make out softly
in pale green leaves against the mist,
and a kiss which is half rescue, and half drowning,
half darkness, and half star.

You have tried to lift a world, both its yes and its no,
and you're tired.
All day, you've struggled to be a human being.
And for this, I write the poem of your eyes,
and of your thin arms,
of the almonds you break every moment:
we can't struggle forever, but we can struggle now —
you're tired, but the poem never tires.
And what we fail to achieve today,
we may delegate to the poem:
and for this, the poem opens our tired eyes,
and asks us to be beautiful.

Who will close the eyelids of this poem?
I am half darkness, a hemisphere, afraid.
I'm afraid that my words are not worthy of you,
and I'm afraid that my patience is mutable.
All the time that we kissed,
Judas was wordless, and Lucifer a falling star,
and the sea was dangerous, and pliable:
against this, you asked me to be beautiful,
and, for the length of a poem, I was.

You have tried to lift the world, all day,
both its yes and its no.
And the strange, childish superman of the poem
who can lift buildings and freight trains
but not my human voice
raises my human voice to the note you call for,
and holds it, purely, forever.
And now no one can sleep:
no one but the person
who will close the eyelids of these words.

And the bloody, heavy foundries of our hearts,
aloof and yet incarnate within us,
we must leave:
and if he is so strong, how is it
he can't keep me close to my heart,
but leaves it, here, beating,
and sustains it, purely within the poem?
Because that is the sound of his voice,
that sweet animator, part Cupid, part Hermes,
part silver, part ore.
And now I can't sleep
until you close the eyelids of this poem —
and neither can he.

I want to be beautiful for you.
And so I write these words, which are green with home.
I can't love you forever, but I can love you now:
and I do. And for a moment,
I will be beautiful for you.

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.

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