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corydon & alexis, redux

By D. A. Powell b. 1963

and yet we think that song outlasts us all: wrecked devotion

the wept face of desire, a kind of savage caring that reseeds itself

and grows in clusters

oh, you who are young, consider how quickly the body deranges itself

how time, the cruel banker, forecloses us to snowdrifts white

as god’s own ribs

what else but to linger in the slight shade of those sapling branches

yearning for that vernal beau. for don’t birds covet the seeds of the

honey locust

and doesn’t the ewe have a nose for wet filaree and slender oats

foraged in the meadow

kit foxes crave the blacktailed hare: how this longing grabs me

by the nape

guess I figured to be done with desire, if I could write it out

dispense with any evidence, the way one burns a pile of twigs

and brush

what was his name? I’d ask myself, that guy with the sideburns

and charming smile

the one I hoped that, as from a sip of hemlock, I’d expire with him

on my tongue

silly poet, silly man: thought I could master nature like a misguided

preacher

as if banishing love is a fix. as if the stars go out when we shut our

sleepy eyes

For Haines Eason

“corydon & alexis, redux” first appeared in Poetry Magazine. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: Poetry (September 2006).

Biography

Born in Albany, Georgia, D.A. Powell earned an MA at Sonoma State University and an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His first three collections of poetry, Tea, (1998), Lunch (2000), and Cocktails (2004), are considered by some to be a trilogy on the AIDS epidemic. Lunch was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and Cocktails was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. His next two books were . . .

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