This, as you probably have guessed by this time,
the case of that and the letters from my father
are the beginning of a little thematic group about time
and what it takes away and what it can take away
as well as what it can bring.
But I noticed after I'd written a few books of poetry
that I was writing about this thing a great deal.
And as I wrote, I discovered in my poetry
the very simple idea that against what time takes away,
there are two great forces, which are
embattled against this loss.
And those are love and art, which
are the holders and keepers, which hang on and keep things
still against the times pull of taking it away.
And I wrote a lot of poems about this
but I'm just going to read one.
It occurred to me just as an idea for a poem
because otherwise who cares, they're both very great powers.
As an idea for a poem I thought I might write about,
which is the greater power against time love or art.
And one would think just from the heart that love was,
naturally.
But love has to cope with mortality,
and after all the people in the world who've loved who've ever
loved you are gone love cannot do very much for you.
On the other hand, if art is great enough,
it can hold things century after century after century.
Yet that isn't so simple either, because if it weren't
for the mixture of love and the aesthetic experience with which
we look at great art, art wouldn't have much holding
power either because nobody would look at it.
And it would be helpless too.
So it seemed to me a kind of complex question.
So I wrote this poem and I used the figure of King Midas
as the artist, the holder and keeper figure.
You all know this, I'll just remind you
that Midas did a favor for Dionysus.
And in return he got his wish.
And his wish was that everything he touched would turn to gold.
And in some of the myths the first problem Midas had
was that he couldn't eat.
And in the poem I just left out.
So he had to go to Dionysus and say please take my gift away
and let me live, I have to eat.
But I ignored this problem in my poem.
He just goes on eating year after year somehow
I don't know how.
I gave him a wife and I made her a gardener
who deals with growing changing things.
"Midas and wife."
He loved the way her fingers loved the ground, a peasant
touch that padded things green.
And would tent to petition for the rain that made their garden
move, and reach freely for bugs the burrowed
or birds that flew away.
She loved his gift for making that fairness stay.
But lest she stay he couldn't touch the queen.
And whose cold image creation would be and then?
He feared his fingers and their golden gain,
but followed her from room to room to touch what she touched.
She arranged a trembling bloom.
He touched the flower fell into its form.
The dog quivered and smiled at her attention.
But felt his brilliant answer and soon
froze forever in a witty grin.
The years went by and all she carried inside
to feel his sovereignty acquiesced
and died into perfection, and into the eternal married
except herself.
The heart of Midas grew cold from his abstention.
The queen group old and the whole palace
filled with scions of gold.
She spoke then, look at my face Midas.
My shame shouts to you there of my long affair with time
while I yearn for the King whose art would keep me home.
I reach for you through the world and you never come.
You reach for what I touch not what I am, and down between us
falls your golden theme.
Besides I have grown so fond of the rich and still.
Though all outdoors rage with the green and fruitful I cannot
bear my own composure until you hold me.
Changing under your touch I'll prove whatever holds perfectly
is stronger than love, but subject still
to love's heartless imperative.
Never on Earth my dear can you and I
discover a golden mediocrity.
The sovereign gift must find a way
to comply when Midas moved in loneliness and pain
to touch her hand.
Her hand turned numb.
Her heart turned quietly into a pair of dim.
And she took her final form in idolatry.
Blinding and blind to him her son like I but her brazen lips
could move him anyway.
And Dionysus smiling set him free.