Benno Barnard

The Poets
.
We,
sightless voyeurs under the petticoats
of the heavens,
deaf philosophers scratching away
at violins,
living authorities on our death –
we are mad with desire

for you,

but have nothing but froth
under skirts, catgut art,
pointless evocations of great
mysteries;
our desire lacks an all-
encompassing music.

“Narrative! Narrative!” you cry.

And so there’s love and death:
someone strings an impossible bow;
another assumes the cloak of madness
to avenge his begetter,
in middle age the third looks up
in the old chaos of the sun.

We’ve held out up till now,
because, despite it all, the anecdote
needs the sublime and the sublime,
the anecdote. Forgive us our pitiful
fiddling with commas and colons.

In the hope that the wind will blow through our work
we write our lovesick poems

to you.