Ode to the Whitman Line “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d”
By Kimiko Hahn
I cannot consider scent without you, I cannot
think that color so gay, so Japanese, so vernal
without you; not assassination or any death in any spring. I think of you
and I am man-and-woman, flawed as a Lincoln,
welcoming as a window-box, and so tenderly alliterative as to draw one near—
at times, perhaps, to withdraw from all—yes,
without you I am without pulse in that dooryard, that blooming unfurling
so tell me finally, is last as in the last time or to make something last
—to hold, to hold you, to memorize fast—
Copyright Credit: Kimiko Hahn, "Ode to the Whitman Line “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d”" from Poem-a-Day: December 12, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Kimiko Hahn. Reprinted by permission of The Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org.
Source: Poem-a-Day: December 12, 2019 (The Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org, 2019)