To C

When you wrote “Un coeur en hiver”

When I listened to you read it

A little lyric poem

Not set to music but invoking music’s name

When you insisted on using

A name that was not your own

But was of you nonetheless

I was already in love

With you, had been for so long

That I became a person

Of the world, obsessed by prosodies

I couldn’t yet break down

But heard everywhere

Around me, in you, of us, the heart

Of winter in your poem.

A line from a song, maybe “Ave Maria”

To measure our distances with.

A paradise that is by nature

Material, it’s where

I make my home. I’m not American

In the same way you are. Just so, the nightingale

Was never a lover

Of knowledge in the old-time sense.

When I went to school

To learn the words

That no one ever writes or speaks

When I learned the big words

Like primogeniture, eschatology, and love

I became a person

Aghast at midnight, its sublimity

The vainglory of poets

On Facebook, in Brooklyn or L.A.

I became a person who grew to hate

The sweet flower of April,

The red-and-white one, the purposes

Of meteors and stars.

I listened to a maiden’s prayer

Made many centuries ago.

I became a person

Forever cursed to discourse on beauty

In front of nobody on earth

But you.