JACK GREENE
A PROMISE BREAK UP LETTER TO WALLACE STEVENS STATUE OF ARIEL AND PROSPERO WATCHING THE STORM WHY FALL REMINDS ME OF YOU
Like paragraphs
we enter—
night
a bridge
balance
a listening
a pear
that
drops
seamless rifts
overhead
the rhythm
of trees
the whiteness
of yes
such
is the promise
Stevens I love you but
now you exhaust me. When
can you get to the real
catch wind of the present
make sense of your body.
I've waited for years
believed in your project
thought others took short cuts
that Williams was talk. Your
heavens, your hells, the
evasions of as: that was
my world too: but it's over.
Stevens, I love you but
I need to sit down, feel
dirt on my feet, touch trees
now and then. Those weeds
under your feet are as fine
as any palm at sunset.
Stevens, listen, please. This
is important. Williams
is right. It all does
lean on the verb. You're
trapped as a noun. Can't
you see that. Get out—
now—while you can.
Don't let yourself die as a noun.
Soaked with a late May storm
I watch the small rain
fall
from Ariel's eyes
down bronze cheeks
across
slender green arms—
raindrops
hang
from his finger-
tips
stretch and
fall
each swollen
drop
re-
placed
with
another
—beginning of the AIDS walk 1992
Delacorte Theatre
Central Park
(ET POURQUOI CECI NES PAS UNE FETISH)
summer—
up
and gone
bloomed out
done.
tonight—
cool air
from wherever
there was
to here.
presence—
not absence
this here
makes me wish
that yours
is such