ARS POETICA

Not like the leaves

windswept through the streets.

Nor still in the sea,

a tethered boat.

A poem is not the sky’s azure,

its lucid air.

A poem is a stake

through the world’s heart,

a glinting blade

driven through the towns.

A poem is pain,

a bright splinter of steel,

ice, a blackened wound.

A poem is obdurate,

its facets diamond.

Graved stone.

A surging Asian river.

A poem is neither voice

nor winged passage.

It’s a rifleshot

at history, the skyline.

A poem is no withering bloom.

It is anguish, embalmed.