Joan Hambidge

Happy anniversary

Today, exactly fifteen years ago
I discovered the emergency exit: Poetry!
This day of commemoration unfortunately lacks
parties, big bands or streamers ...

Even more.

Only the dismal awareness
that poetry makes nothing happen
as Auden stated;
a decade ago in a New Haven winter
I unconsciously declared the broken shards,
grave stones and underground windows of old buildings
to be poetic symbols.

In the meantime, a lifetime has passed.
And poetry has had its uncompromising, merciless way
with me. Nothing much has changed.
Only lovers seemed to stir this poetic fire
with more viciousness.
None (need I say) had your élan
and thanks to your denial
of the importance of poetry
I can send you off
in well-balanced, certain similes
(for instance, our love rests in a graveyard),
you reduce to nothing. Nada.
But be warned: at our D-day reunion I shall ask:
“Is it true that the war made Eisenhower?“

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