I was asked to read one poem, from a book length
sequence of poems and I will.
The title of the series is The Escape Into You.
And halfway through, there appears
this poem, which is addressed to my sons and which is titled
We Have Known.
We have known such joy as a child knows.
My sons, in whom everything rests,
know that there were those who were deeply in love,
and who asked you in, and who did not
claim a tree of thoughts like family branches would sustain
you.
My sons, in whom I am well pleased,
you will learn that a man is not a child,
and there is that which a woman cannot bear,
but as deep wounds for which you may hate me,
who must live in you a long time,
coursing obsessively in the murky passages.
These poems, also, are such and such passages
as I have had to leave you.
If very little can pass through them,
know that I did, and made them, and finally did not need them.
We have known such joys as a child knows, and will not
survive, though you have them.