The Game of Poetry

Now I think—this is the game,
poetry itself,
pages filled with erasures and crossings-out.
If you remember,
you were like a metaphor,
seeing everything as play,
all the innocent chastity—
and is all this to be called a game?
 
I know what must be spoken,
whether I go or not—
I wonder if I shall return upon the same road.
My mind floats, lying idle,
thinking in a life too lazy
to create anything new.
All this is but mist,
a sorcery of civilization,
where the whole sky falls into darkness.
When disaster enters life,
a light glimmers for a moment,
and silently the eyes behold—
but then it sinks again
beneath the quilt, in shelter.
 
Yet when you awoke,
I had not thought it was only a dream,
only a game.
Upon the soil of reality
imagination was destroyed,
and love became a harlot
beneath the insult of lecherous eyes,
beneath the smell of wine.
You had thought
this was still a virgin life.
 
The day her menstruation ceased
she knew the poem was finished,
and a new story had begun.
No longer the perfect ascetic,
no longer the innocent lover’s gaze,
but a crooked glance,
a distorted eye—
surely you have known it.
To live on now is only with poetry’s memory:
pages filled with scratchings,
black-blood scribbles, blue lines,
the play of clever words—
and there is no road back!
 
Do you have the courage,
in a new youth,
in virginity once more,
to awaken?
To recover
the wild exuberance of youth,
the radiant morning light—
the game of poetry.