Randall Couch
I.
We remember the new, not the good.
This is history as aphorism.
If an aphorism’s a proposition with a horizon,
what is the horizon of new?
Newness is endless.
Poetry’s first work: the conversation
of names.
So why hope to write
what has never been written of any woman?
Do I praise her because she was good?
Do I write well of her?
Though I speak with the tongues
of men and of angels
and have not novelty
will she be forgotten?
II.
In each first night we sense the arrow’s shadow,
yet all readers keep appointments with the past.
So why no value in a second kiss?
The innocent eye sees nothing.
What conversation doesn’t loop
and turn, and by analogy create us?
Beauty is only a promise we return
to redeem.
What was promised under the myrtles
is fulfilled among mimosa clouds.
What each discovers
becomes ours.
III.
The dead
are that which we know.
In the sonata,
the aria da capo,
the sampled beat,
we recapitulate.
In time the living
remember anew the good.
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