Irren

 
    
Irren

      "Maybe that's all I am
      But listen to my last word
      I take back everything I've said.
      With the greatest bitterness in the world
      I take back everything I've said."
            Nicanor Parra from
            "I Take Back Everything I've Said"

A distant scream, primal urgency
Balanced between far away and not
Immediacy, the here and now (there and when?)
The words, what do they really mean?
I am a poet, therefore I lie
I lie in the very vers libre I call poems
And yet, I learn:

      To take a word from Auden
      Menschlich, German for human
      (such an odd juxtaposition)

And yet, I whisper:

      "Irren is menschlich"
      (To err is human).

My mistake, like hers: trust
To trust in his words, his verse
And as a poet, his lies.

I hear the echoes, the voices in the night
Wet, blanketed screams as rain closes in
And Isadore repeats the lies
Repenting with every gust, every slap:
"Love is a storm, a deadly, deadly wind."
Such is a fitting end.