This is titled The Old Fashioned Heart
because it's by somebody who grew up
in a romantic age who knows better, but refuses to change.
The Old Fashioned Heart.
The initiation begins with the mouth then the breasts.
Both the brightness of the sun and the darkness are women.
The white moon and the new moon are women.
We struggle to get there.
After that comes the three strange manners of the groin.
The water and the stone are women.
The trees and vineyards are women.
And we worked there.
Finally, the mouth again.
But the mouth different.
The silence and the windlessness.
The dancing slowly, and lying still in the noon heat
are women.
We dream of that place.
The Jerusalem in our chest.
Villages and valleys, ships and ports, militants
and the dark inside the night.
Ballrooms, and cathedrals, caves, tunnels, trap doors,
along with the soul, which is single, and all of which
are women.
There is a far off singing and a small doubt.
There is this far off singing and small down.
There is a far off singing and small dawn rain.
The defeats and memories are the women
we hunt, and find, and lose, and give thanks for.
Their honey left in our spirit.
A little of the honey mixed with our mind.
The fire, the suffering, and fading, the haunting after.