Redundancies of Evening
by Michael Blumenthal
There are many redundancies in the world:
A man who has never kissed another
can still say, Peace, my little friend, your lips
are soft as apricots in August. But nothing,
of course, makes up for the true intimacies
of flesh and fabric, nothing can make us feel better
than the flip and finesse of our finest moments,
when we are lost to our own importance
and gather up the blown petals of flowers,
shake the branches of the mock orange
and refuse to shield our own heads from
what rains down on us. Earthly blessings
are not, of course, primarily what we’re here for;
still, the dark that night brings abates daily
and even the cloudiest skies merely disguise
the unextinguishable lightbulb of the sun
lurking behind them. Zinnias will bloom into
late November, the aggrieved will gather
in their tents of fiber and dust and make
small fires, even in summer, and whatever
I have just said to you, I will, doubtlessly,
say again, without fear of repeating myself,
without, even, the moon’s rising to whisper sleep.
Copyright © 2010 by Michael Blumenthal.
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