For Pessoa
I read your love poem,
a failure. To ruin a poem
like this, so clumsy, a stutter.
Odd gauge for a masterpiece:
shy sensitivity.
Your love exceeds your words.
Hesitation spoils the master’s poem.
Someone in love
abandons grammar, rhetoric.
One more hallmark
of great poets.
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My Cows Arrive
My cows arrive,
led by strange children. Slow-hoofed soldiers
from the latest front, tramping through my head at dawn.
May they walk toward the lamp that burns all night,
toward the walls,
the leaves waking at sunrise.
Bite by bite, may they graze the meadow
of hard fact, the dark works of their interior
feed the ghosts of my fervent heart.
Image © Europeana
