Postromantic: a cento

To find a kiss of yours

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude
I'm not asking you to finish

so I look at the blue water, the snowy egret, the lace of its feathers

without a trace of irony or blush of shame—
We prefer to do it with the lights on

and what I do not say is, I trust the world to come back.

What is a story we never tell?
A hundred birds flew over a hundred fields.

                  sandstone, red basalt
From iron clangor and the engulfing crowd

Ladders, and whatever else
Might fall from the sky.
 

*

[Sources: Federico Garcia Lorca; Rumi; Djuna Barnes; 
Aria Aber; James Crews; Traci Brimhall; Ada Limon; 
Gabriela Mistral; Yanyi; Babette Deutsch; Alicia 
Ostriker; Alison C. Rollins]