X Minus X

X
Even when your friend, the radio, is still; even when her dream, the magazine, is finished; even when his life, the ticker, is silent; even when their destiny, the boulevard, is bare;
And after that paradise, the dance-hall, is closed; after that theater, the clinic, is dark,

Still there will be your desire, and hers, and his hopes and theirs,
Your laughter, their laughter,
Your curse and his curse, her reward and their reward, their dismay and his dismay and her dismay and yours—

Even when your enemy, the collector, is dead; even when your counsellor, the salesman, is sleeping; even when your sweetheart, the movie queen, has spoken; even when your friend, the magnate, is gone.
Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

Beach Body by Ovid
Ovid
early morning. down to the shore again
to find a place to grieve. the place he left
lingering. here the ropes were loosed [here
he gave me kisses on the shore, here he left] she said

and while she thought and looked and felt, looking out
along the shore, in liquid space, she saw—far off
not sure—a body or something in the water—
wondered what, but then the waves pulled it by—still
Read Poem
0
118
Rating:

Woman Unborn by Anna Swir
Anna Swir
I am not born as yet,
five minutes before my birth.
I can still go back
into my unbirth.
Now it’s ten minutes before,
now, it’s one hour before birth.
I go back,
I run
Read Poem
0
95
Rating:

A Word on Statistics by Wisława Szymborska
Wisława Szymborska
Out of every hundred people

those who always know better:
fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.

Ready to help,
if it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.
Read Poem
0
131
Rating:

The Unfaithful Housewife by Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca

For Mary Peace Then I led her to the river
certain she was still a virgin
Read Poem
0
101
Rating:

From “Odi Barbare” by Geoffrey Hill
Geoffrey Hill
xxiv
What is far hence led to the den of making:
Moves unlike wildfire | not so simple-happy
Ploughman hammers ploughshare his durum dentem
Digging the Georgics

Vision loads landscape | lauds Idoto Mater
Bearing up sacrally so graced with bodies
Voids the challenge how far from Igboland great-
Stallioned Argos

Vehemencies minus the ripe arraignment
Clapper this art taken to heart the fiction
What are those harsh cryings astrew the marshes
Weep not to hear them
Read Poem
0
76
Rating:

Cullen in the Afterlife by P. K. Page
P. K. Page
He found it strange at first. A new dimension.
One he had never guessed. The fourth? The fifth?
How could he tell, who’d only known the third?
Something to do with eyesight, depth of field.
Perspective quite beyond him. Everything flat
or nearly flat. The vanishing point
they’d tried to teach at school was out of sight
and out of mind. A blank.

Now, this diaphanous dimension—one
with neither up nor down, nor east nor west,
nor orienting star to give him north.
Even his name had left him. Strayed like a dog.
Yet he was bathed in some unearthly light,
a delicate no-color that made his flesh
Read Poem
0
97
Rating:

Cold Calls (War Music, Continued) by Christopher Logue
Christopher Logue
Many believe in the stars.


Take Quinamid
The son of a Dardanian astrologer
Who disregarded what his father said
And came to Troy in a taxi.

Gone.



Odysseus to Greece:

“Hector has never fought this far from Troy.
Read Poem
0
102
Rating: