I know the title of this poem is also a song.
I said in the class today, that's
where I get a lot of my titles.
"Anyone Who Had a Heart."
OK I know that's a song sung by Dionne
Warwick among other people.
But don't think of that.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, "Anyone Who Had a Heart."
"I know a man who routinely asks that I humiliate him.
It's sex, and it isn't, whatever.
For him, it's a need, the way brutality
can seem for so long a likely answer, that it becomes
the answer, a kindness, even.
And I have always been kind, for which reason
it goes against my nature to do what he says,
but there's little in nature that won't,
with enough training, change.
After it's done, if the weather's good,
we tour his garden.
Heliotrope, evening primrose.
Proximity is one thing, he likes to say, penetration another,
and I have learned that's true.
Though which is better depends.
Whose life?
What story?
The relief of snowmelt, or the flooded fields again?
We go down to the stables to visit the horses
that, when they were nothing, just shivering foals still,
he once asked me to give names to.
How long we've traveled, he and I, more like drifted, really,
and how far.
More black than all the sorrows and joys put together that I
can remember, when I try remembering,
which I mostly don't.
Now the foals, they're stallions.
Call out Fanfare, Adoration.
Like broken kings, they lower their heads, then raise them."