Letter to Ardor

4 Replies to “Letter to Ardor”

1. Luisa, this is a beautiful poem. Thanks for stepping forth with these spontaneous pieces each day. I’ve read a number of them, and I like them.

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2. Rosemary, thanks for dropping a note here- and for your good words. Let me say I’m a fan of your work too; and it was great to be part of the Letters to the World project which you co-edited. Your book is on my list of things to purchase and read this summer!

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3. Counting from the Middle

   Oh, but maybe it’s you after all who’s right, to count
   the costs of lingering. I have grown white with blossom,
   wrinkled with lichen, confused with kisses that came
   after the peace was declared. And still the roots push deeper
   and the flare is brighter, and the copper-green pulls gold
   tighter to the finger. How to reckon now, with the end
   and the beginning both lost in the half-leaved trees?

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4. RETURN MAIL (After Letter to Ardor)

   “I an old man,/A dull head among windy spaces./…I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it/ Since what is kept must be adulterated?/ I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:/ How should I use them for your closer contact?—T.S. Eliot, Gerontion

   When I got your letter, it was past my hammock hour,
   and mellow from the longings I had the night before:
   you said we will grow old and the flares will flicker

   but not our stubborn dream, reckless, an ignited habit
   of holding on, a moribund troth of our semper fidelis
   that needs must break through a dotard, decrepit passion

   put to use only when desire overflows its bounden
   confines— unchecked memories of passion on the sand
   underneath overhanging bluffs, trysts at wayside inns.

   Perhaps, I will never really be able to take you back
   to that belfry of the carillonneur where we hummed
   our evening songs, brave songs, love songs. I am old.

   Shall I trudge those seashores and skip over waves
   with trouser bottoms rolled? Shall I steal those kisses
   for an eternal ingénue and say: O, ‘twas accidental?

   But like you, I still taste the brine on my tongue,
   the dark seas still haunt my lonely hammock hours,
   and your habit of rootedness is really a habit of shores

   that must always roll the waves back to the sea
   that takes back all the buried footprints, even love
   heart sketches (ran through by arrows) you drew.

   —Albert B. Casuga
   054-08-11

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